A life for a life
by R.V.Wells
Summary: Shocked by the ultimate fate Dumbledore have reserved to Lily's son, Snape comes up with an idea to eradicate the piece of foreign soul in him: Harry must become a father. Hermione volunteers. (Rated M for steamy scenes, influenceable unmarried people please abstain)
1. Snape's revelations

**Disclaimer**: You Know Who owns Harry Potter and the rest.

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**WARNING**: This fic deals with a number of ethical issues, the main one being (as you might have understood from the summary) the usage of present and future human bodies and beings, from an utilitarian point of view. Which might be fun to write but very hard to condone in reality.

**Real human beings are not means to an end.**

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I'll stick to **medical facts** (unless, of course, magic is implicated directly.) You are free to correct me if you feel I'm making mistakes. Which I won't. But, you know, sometimes I might not be clear enough, specially since English is not my mother tongue. Then please do tell so I can correct it.

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**Author's note:** It has been hard for me to pinpoint when exactly Dumbledore spoke to Snape about Harry's death. I'm betting for a few days prior to Ron's poisoning, based on what Hagrid reported. (It's a good moment too because the spouses of the epilogue, were in couple with other people, so no need to bring them to any of this. I hope I'm not wrong. If I am, do tell.) So strictly canon-compliant until the first half of HP6.

**"A life for a life"**

Even at these hours of the night, the bat-like form of the potions -now DADA- teacher was as out of place in the gold-and-red Gryffindor common room, as a hippogriff swimming in the lake. As he approached Harry, the boy's pleading gaze went to the only other living soul in the room: Hermione, sitting on the opposite corner; she was stiff and watching the professor carefully. No matter how they had fought these last times, no matter their difference of criteria regarding enemies and books, Harry knew she'd intervene if Snape tried to do something to him, and find help if he took him somewhere else, as he apparently planned:

"Follow me, Potter."

The man's expression was inscrutable but his voice had a taint of urgency that somehow made him even more suspicious.

"Can't it wait till tomorrow, professor?"

"I said 'follow me'"

The professor turned, his trademark cloak swing, a reminder that Harry was probably about to meet a death sentence –again-. But his had been a pathetic attempt to delay the inevitable. Certainly, daylight meant nothing to the man's office. Hermione's nod relieved him somehow, but he was still silent and terrified all the way to Snape's office, where weird creatures still rested in baths of disgusting substances.

"Close the door" the professor ordered.

Harry's gaze went to the man and back to the door, as if pondering not to obey, but Snape simply waited, a cold, immutable expression in his eyes, until the Gryffindor complied. And even then, silence reigned in the room, until Harry asked:

"Is there something you want from me?"

The Slytherin eyed him intently, and Harry wondered if he was reading his mind, but this time there was truly nothing there to read. He was simply too confused.

"What I want, Potter, is to preserve your miserable, and nonetheless priceless existence."

Harry's jaw might have dropped to the floor. Not that he believed the wizard, but… had he just called his life 'priceless'? The silence that followed was so absolute that Harry wondered if the rustle he heard came all the way from the Forbidden Forest.

"Professor?"

"I have spoken to Dumbledore" the syllables rolled weirdly, as always, in the man's tongue. "You must know that by telling you this now, I am disobeying a direct order from him. Which I avoid even while facing the Dark Lord, since Dumbledore's scheme is soulless and cunning. Some people call it wise" he said as if he despised the epithet. "So, may you believe me or not, your dear mentor will probably deny all of this."

Perhaps Harry would have defended Dumbledore, but Snape had him ever from the first syllable. Knowing what Dumbledore didn't want him to know. That was a long-cherished dream of his ever since… well, at least since the ending of fourth year. So the boy stayed silent, waiting –hoping- for the man to keep going. Snape took his time. The scarce light danced eerily in the multicolor flasks on the walls. Finally, the boy burst:

"Dumbledore doesn't want me to know… what, professor?"

"That you house a part of the Dark Lord's soul."

Harry stepped back as if he had been physically hit, even before fully comprehending. House a soul? Like a horcrux?

"Hence the connection between your minds" Snape continued, as if not noticing the paleness of his skin. "Hence your ability to speak to snakes."

"Like a horcrux?" Harry asked to himself, without thinking that he might be providing information.

Snape only narrowed his eyes.

"Evidently."

"So… so… What? How do I extract it? How do I…?"

The words 'destroy it' hovered strangely over them.

"The Headmaster's opinion, is that you must perform a certain task and then be told that you are to die to Voldemort's wand."

Now it was the word 'die', this time spoken, which hovered. But before Harry could fully comprehend it, Snape added:

"Which is, of course, the reason why we are enduring each other's presence today."

Harry's brain was still spinning with the revelation, and for some moments he stood there, trying to reject the logic in his words, and failing miserably. He felt the urge to fight and defeat, and yet, what was asked of him, was death. At the end, at least. And Dumbledore… If it was true, the old man had been preparing him to… what, die?

"But… but… how? How am I supposed to defeat Voldemort if I'm…?"

"Apparently, your life is not required at the moment of the final battle."

"But… the prophecy!"

Snape found nothing to answer to it. Harry's heart was still beating in his chest, and his panting was so loud he thought he was hearing it redoubled. He almost felt his mind snapping shut. He simply said:

"I don't believe you."

Snape wasn't impressed. He stared at the boy, silent.

"You… you always… always… provoke me. You haven't forgiven my father. You hate me! Why would you save me? No…"

"What reason would I have to lie?" Snape's words were a mere whisper, but their simplicity made them stand over Harry's confused speech.

"I don't know! Why would you?!" Harry everything but cried to the professor's face.

The man didn't as much as blink.

"Ironically enough" he started calmly, "I seem to value your life more than the headmaster does."

Wood moved against stone, and Harry felt himself be pushed towards the chair the professor had just placed behind him; he fought, but then Snape put his wand into his hand and Harry simply stared at it, panting, and then at the man that suddenly looked thirty years older. The boy's mind could process nothing else. The word 'die' was painted in red in the back of his eyelashes, and he was trying hard not to blink.

"In lack of an operating pensieve –such as the one Dumbledore keeps in his office-" he added bitterly, "I will allow you to break into my mind. You are not a legilimens, but I can put all my defenses down so you can find reasons to trust me there. If I do, will you believe me?"

Harry's spirit quieted gradually, until he could understand what Snape was proposing. The professor was still waiting for him to answer.

"What do I do?" he responded, still suspicious.

"I spent a ridiculous amount of nights last year performing the spell on you. If, as Dumbledore claims, you didn't inherit your father's stupidity, you might know it by now."

Putting in the spell all the hate he bore for this man, Harry said: "Legilimency"

* * *

An hour later, he stepped out of the man's mind, gasping as if he had spent the same amount of time under the lake. His gaze carried as a mixture of feelings including mainly astonishment, as he stared at the man that could have been his father, had circumstances been different.

"I don't appreciate your pity" this one spit.

His expression was as unreadable as always.

Harry tried to find he loathe he used to feel towards the Head of Slytherin, and couldn't find it. And yet, something in him was still resistant to believe in a destiny that seemed not only opposed to the prophecy, but also to any hope he would still carry for himself. He made a conscious effort to think as Hermione would.

"How do I know that you didn't edit or chose the memories?"

Snape's eyebrows arched.

"To deceive you?"

His expression and his voice showed the scorn he still felt towards his enemy's son, and yet, he grabbed his wand from the boy's unresponsive one, and cast:

"Expecto patronum"

A silver doe laid between them, turned her head towards Harry, and he forgot where he was, lost in her eyes as he had been lost in his own patronus three years ago. As he extended his hand, she stepped towards him majestically, and he almost felt the ghostly coldness and the lovely warmth of her matter in his cheek, when she extended her head to brush it against him. "Mom?" he whispered as she retreated and looked into his eyes. Then, she vanished, leaving boy and man to hide the tears they didn't mean to shed. Tears none of them acknowledged, in themselves or in the other.

"As you must know" the professor continued, pretending that nothing had happened, "there is no one in this school knowing more about the Dark Arts than I do. Despite the Headmaster's best intentions, I know how to create a horcrux. And thankfully, I also have some ideas as to how to dismantle it."

"Dismantle…?" Harry's voice was heard, empty of sense or soul; he felt as an echo.

"A horcrux" Snape lectured as if he was describing how to boil Polyjuice "is a receptacle for the soul, and is shaped as such by taking a life. The process involves the soul damage it causes to the murderer, but it does not suffice, as proven by the fact that not all murders –not even genocides- are or can be shaped into horcruxes. The process is… delicate. There are properties inherent to the horcrux itself, such as the durability and the soul previously inhabitant living horcruxes. And there is the damage caused to the natural tissue of life and its balance with death by the abrupt disruption of an existence whose time to cease had not come. I hypothesize the process might be reversed by the horcrux itself, by giving life. That would mend the tissue, and the receptacle would become temporarily inadequate. A life for another. An inanimate object can't give life, but something alive, such as you... well, it's rather common."

They stared at each other, the man, inexpressive, and the boy, confused as he came back to himself slowly.

"Give life, professor?" he echoed. After a moment, his mood was clear enough to understand part of what Snape had said. "Transfigure something into an animal?"

For a second, Harry almost laughed at the simplicity of it. He had done so many times, in class. But then it sank, slowly: that couldn't be it, Voldemort's soul would have been vanished a thousand times already. And yet, Harry was shaken by the utter scandal in the professor's words:

"I mean procreate."

The man's eyes still inspected him, as if he was taking an exam. Harry's consciousness awakened slowly. He couldn't… No, he must be hearing wrong. His voice was thin and acute when he echoed:

"Procreating?"

"I expect you to know about the birds and the bees."

The professor's despise dropped in each word, and Harry knew he was doing a conscious effort to not be too harsh. To be Lily's son apparently gave Harry a right to his life, and to merely the barest trace of respect.

"But… but… You can't be serious…"

The professor frowned as if he was offended of having ever been considered "not serious". Yet somehow, from somewhere –maybe from the utter shock and disbelief- Harry got the confidence to keep speaking.

"You can't suggest… or even condone… Professor! It's… inadequate behavior… underage…"

He was certainly thinking like Hermione in more ways than one. But his words became more and more inarticulate until they were unintelligible, and the professor judged wise to intervene.

"I'm the Head of Slytherin, Potter. I don't care for the means, as far as they meet my end."

"But I can't become a father!"

Snape's eyes were cold as he whispered, in the same tone.

"You only have to give life to something, Potter. I don't care if it doesn't live one week within the womb. I don't care if you gut the embryo and sacrifice it to the fires of Hogwarts; I'd go sing at the ritual, if you did. I'd store it in a flask. I don't care. As long as Lily's sacrifice is honored."

The sweetness with which he pronounced his mother's name, was nearly lost to Harry, as a catalogue of the girls he knew appeared in his mind, and he despised himself even for considering it.

"I can't do this to any girl."

"You can, if you want to live."

"I'll have to see it printed."

The female voice came from behind Harry, and both of them turned to see Hermione walking out of the shadows, wearing the Invisibility Cloak over her shoulders. The professor's surprise showed in his face just for a second, and then he pursed his lips in distaste and stood. Finding himself in disadvantage, Harry stood too, and faced his friend. He would have tried to smile to her, if he wasn't so shocked.

"You won't" the professor answered. "As I said, this is a hypothesis. There are few documented horcruxes, and none of them is human. But there is magic in blood, especially in blood shared with an innocent. You being a muggle-born, you must have heard of heirs, fairytales where firstborns are exchanged for mythical favors…"

"And animals?" she said, as if she hadn't listened to the ending of his speech; she wasn't even aware that she had just interrupted a professor.

Snape stared at her coldly before answering:

"The few animals made into horcruxes have had no offspring, which lead me to believe that either the process made them sterile, or the owner did before storing the soul in them."

"So you don't know if I can make it" Harry interpreted; then he remembered what was the 'it', and paled and blushed in turn.

"I know you must try."

* * *

Hermione had to drag him to the Gryffindor tower. Of the fevered speech she uttered all the way there, Harry would never remember a single word. They found Ron in the common room, saying good night to Lavender with a foolish smile in his face; visibly, she didn't repel him tonight, and Harry would have thought of asking Ron about his secret date, had the circumstances been less serious. Before Ron himself started asking them about the reason why they were together and out of the common room at this hours, Hermione gazed Harry and, seeing his lack of disapproval, started telling Ron all the details of their night. Only much later Harry remembered that they were supposed to be angry at each other, and put a name to the gleeful and nostalgic warmth in his stomach: as if he had both of his best friends again.

"So now we trust Snape" Ron said, as if they were asking him to pet a spider.

"I'm confident he was telling the truth."

The red-haired boy's gaze showed only disbelief.

"Ron, he wasn't aware that I was there, and Harry was inside of his mind. Why would he spent the entire hour crying? Sobbing and all…"

The idea of Snape, desperate, was still too new to Harry. The two concepts didn't seem to belong to the same sentence. That didn't but reinforce the feeling that Snape had suffered enough. He warned her with a gaze. Ron must be told something, if he was to understand their sudden change of mind regarding the Slytherin, yet Harry would rather keep the professor's weaknesses a secret, having even refused to tell her what he had seen in the man's mind in detail. To his opinion, he was entitled to his privacy, to his dignity. Being a jerk and all.

He opted for a change of subject.

"But… Hermione… I'm only sixteen! I can't have a child! And every one of the girls in this tower is around that age. Unless I pick a professor…"

For a second he pictured himself trying McGonagall, and he didn't know if he must blush or laugh at the image.

"And I can't go tell about horcruxes to just everyone, and ask gently if they'll sleep with me!"

"Well, I don't think they'll take you as semen donor…" as soon as she named it, she blushed again. "You can't explain it to any healer: even if they believe you and they are against Him, why would they risk helping you? There are other ways of getting rid of a horcrux."

The probability of someone killing Harry had just increased exponentially.

"So I guess we must start immediately…" she said.

"What?"

"The… process, Harry" suddenly he realized that she found it as hard to spell as he did. Yet, she breathed in, found the scientist in her, and extricated them from the equation enough for the next words to sound firm: "As a male, you can engender any time of the month, but any female has a single day in her cycle in which she ovulates -even though her body saves spermatozoids for five days or so-. In an ideal environment, a male having around fourteen females would have an optimal chance of engendering…"

Ron patted his shoulder, whispered something about getting lucky. Harry ignored him and stared at Hermione. Against all odds, he hoped she would have a solution. She usually did.

"Another problem is that, by living together, all the possible volunteers you have at your disposal have their cycles synchronized so you'll have a single week a month to… solve the problem. With a peak of chances at one night. But you don't know which one it is. And even if you did, hard as it is to convince someone to sleep with you, it would be worse –culturally speaking- if you planned to sleep with several girls the same week. You'll have to try with a girl one of two days, until pregnancy is achieved."

She was blushing, and still all he could think of, what how smart she was.

"So, any ideas?"

"Not my sister" Ron stated bluntly. Everyone looked at him. "Even if I were OK with it, my mother would kill you."

"Any mother would kill him, Ron" Hermione pointed.

Harry shrugged. Apparently, the killing part was literally everywhere in his future. Maybe Trelawney had been right more than once, after all.

"Maybe Cho?" Ron suggested.

Harry just shook his head. She was one year older than them, so in a slightly-less-bad age to get pregnant, but ever since Marietta's betrayal, he didn't know even how to start speaking to her again, not to say offer to father her child. The child part still made him dizzy.

"Maybe we should gather the DA and ask the girls" Ron said again.

"It'll be hard with anyone not-Gryffindor" Hermione pointed, "because of the logistics: getting together, planning…"

Harry couldn't believe how little he knew about the rest of the girls in his House. Of most of them, he didn't know even the names. He almost lost her next words, and then he nearly wished he had.

"It'll have to be me."

Ron's face turned red as Harry's turned pale.

"No!" they cried at the same time.

"It makes sense" she lectured, "I'm already aware of the problem, I understand it fully, and I'm willing…"

"Everyone but you!" Ron exclaimed vehemently.

She rolled her eyes.

"You just said: not Ginny" she pointed.

"I didn't know you were about to volunteer!"

"You can't be serious!" Harry was exclaiming.

"Why not?" she said, as if they were discussing the climate. "You said yourself you didn't think I was ugly."

It took some moments to place that dialogue. That Hermione would remember something that had happened a year before mustn't come as a surprise –she being brilliant and all-, but it did.

Ron eyed him suspiciously. Well, at least he was still listening. Harry rushed:

"Listen: I suspect you have a crush on… someone, and that someone might as well have a crush on you. You…"

"Harry!" she cut. "I don't care about who's crushing on who. It's your life what is at stake here! We'll do it" she blushed intently, just then recognizing the second meaning of the words, and yet she managed to add. "And that's final!"

Harry gritted his teeth.

"I won't do this to you" he muttered vehemently. "_That's_ final…"

"Say something, Ron!" they both cried at the same time.

The boy was visibly trying to decide if they were both tricking him.

"If you want to be together, you can just tell me, mate" he said at last. "You don't have to tell tales, and this one… this one is way too twisted…"

"Ronald!" she sounded scandalized. "How can you suggest…!"

"Suggest what?!" the red-haired wizard said in a fainted scream. "To want to shag you is not a crime!"

"Ronald…!"

She found herself wordless, and bile rose to her throat, as Ron breathed and raised a hand, hushing them both. Without looking at any of them, he stated:

"If you want to… date, you have my blessing. If the entire story is true, then I'm on Hermione's side. Reckon chess is way easier with a queen… or several... and she's right, as usual. Now I'm going to bed."

He rose tiredly. The smile he had worn before was gone, but Harry bet it was that spirit what still kept him standing, and maybe for the first time, he was grateful to Lavender for distracting his mate. He and Hermione saw him disappear upstairs, and a second later, she stated:

"It'll take him time to process."

"It'll not" Harry cut. "We are not doing this. You are not doing this…"

"Harry, if you think I'd rather see you dead than sleep with you, you are grossly mistaken."

She had stated it simply, not even blushing, as if she was stating one of the twelfth uses of dragon blood. It sent a shiver down his spine –and it wasn't unpleasant, at all-. Yet, he repeated:

"I won't do that to you."

"Oh, you will, Harry. You most certainly will. Even muggle men can be seduced. And they don't even have amortentia. I can boil it, if needed, you know…"

Hermione's eyes were narrowed as if she was working on a particularly difficult transfiguration. And she always managed those. He realized how hard -or sweet?- his life was about to become.

* * *

**Preview**:

Because now, with Ron gone, it was all him and Hermione, and the lioness was literally everywhere: playing with her hair in the common room as she read, sitting in front of him during meals –was she wearing make-up?!-, bending over his shoulder as she pointed out mistakes in his homework, raising her hand beside him in class –his marks should be improving, and they were dropping at record speed because he couldn't take his eyes off her-. She wore a perfume that smelled a lot like amortentia itself did to him, and he thought it was a trick, but then remembered having smelled it in her long before having heard of love potions –when riding Buckbeack?-. Then he started second-guessing what had come first, Hermione or amortentia, and if he smelled that on the potion because he was –even if slightly- in love with his best female friend back then. It was messing him up, seriously. He thought of avoiding her again and couldn't stand the thought.

* * *

I cherish and answer every one of your **reviews** (and go check on the reviewers' account, 'cause we obviously have similar taste). Please let me know how you feel.


	2. Amortentia

**Disclaimer**: You Know Who owns Harry Potter and the rest.

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**WARNING**: Some of the drama depends on the possibility of a teen pregnancy carried to term, so it was rather unavoidable to at least brush the subject of contraception and termination of the unborn, which I do at the ending of this chapter. Medical sources include Rigol's Textbook of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Ganong's Review of Medical Physiology. You are still free to correct me if you feel I'm making mistakes. It's quite obviously not in my best interest to lose readers, but beyond that, I really hope this is useful and not harmful at all, in any way. I also do not mean to judge anyone, being hardly able to judge myself.

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**"Amortentia"**

Harry had spent the rest of the week avoiding Hermione, only being caught by her occasionally at meals, and not speaking to her even then. It was so evident that Ron had started speaking to him again, and seemingly believed him. The red-headed wizard occasionally brought the topic, and Harry dismissed it. He had no idea of how to break the subject. 'Hey, girl-whose-name-I-don't-know, do you want to get pregnant?' didn't seem all that effective.

And at night, Hermione's last speech came often to his mind: 'they can be seduced'. The words at first made him shiver, but the scary effect wore off too soon, and then he started imagining how would anyone seduce him, and how would Hermione seduce, and one night he remembered how she had smelled last time she had hugged him –of treacle tart and flowers-, and realized that he was, after all, getting acquainted to the idea. Then he refused to think of it. Which, of course, meant that he was thinking of it every waking moment, and dreaming of it at night.

"And there's this professor…" Ron whispered at breakfast, his mouth for once empty as he enthusiastically helped his mate to get laid… or so he thought, "she isn't beautiful but I guess she might want a baby…"

"Ron…" Harry said tiredly, "I said I'd rather not. Please let me die in peace."

"You aren't dying, mate. Not if I can stop it from happening."

"I wasn't even supposed to know my fate until who knows when, so let's pretend we don't" he plead. "We have time…"

"No, we don't."

They both turned to Hermione, who was sitting beside Ron. Harry blushed intently and deviated his gaze towards Luna, who waved her hand dreamily from the other side of the room.

"If you don't" Hermione was telling Ron, "I'll go tell McGonagall what you did with Lavender last night and where."

"You won't!" he sounded absolutely horrified before realizing the real question. "And how would you know…"

"Lavender speaks. A lot. Use it."

Harry wouldn't have gotten suspicious, if not for Ron's uncharacteristic gaze, that made him eye the pocked where the red-headed wizard was currently storing a flask. A flask with mother-of pearl sheen.

"That's amortentia?!" Harry shrieked.

Some students eyed him suspiciously. Both Ron and Hermione stared at him too. Only Ron seemed ashamed.

"I hope it's no for me."

None of them answered.

"Oh, you can't be serious!"

"I did warn you, Harry" Hermione said quietly. "Your choice."

Something in Harry's chest woke up and growled hungrily. He ignored it.

The rest of the day, he was overly attentive to everything he ate or drank, mainly if Ron had handed it. He was starting to understand Moody when the night came.

Yet, after Ron's worst birthday ever, Harry started to miss it.

Because now, with Ron gone, it was all him and Hermione, and the lioness was literally everywhere: playing with her hair in the common room as she read, sitting in front of him during meals –was she wearing make-up?!-, bending over his shoulder as she pointed out mistakes in his homework, raising her hand beside him in class –his marks should be improving, and they were dropping at record speed because he couldn't take his eyes off her-. She wore a perfume that smelled a lot like amortentia itself did to him, and he thought it was a trick, but then remembered having smelled it in her long before having heard of love potions –when riding Buckbeack?-. Then he started second-guessing what had come first, Hermione or amortentia, and if he smelled that on the potion because he was –even if slightly- in love with his best female friend back then. It was messing him up, seriously. He thought of avoiding her again and couldn't stand the thought.

He had even stopped spying on Malfoy. That must be a sign.

"Hermione?"

"Mmmm?"

She lifted her gaze from the book and smiled to him, and he felt slightly dizzy seeing how the firelight reflected in her eyes. He hesitated for a second before asking:

"What are you wearing?"

She looked down, and back to him. Not surprised. There was a spark of mischief in her eyes.

"I haven't bought new pajamas in four years, Harry."

He stared at the way the fluffy fabric clang to her breasts and hips, which had certainly changed in those few years. How he cleavage now looked dark, showing a lot less than other girls were showing, and a lot more than he could manage in her. The look had meant to be dispassionate and friendly, and suddenly he realized it wasn't. 'Honestly, her pajamas?' he thought. 'What kind of question was that?" Drawing a ragged breath, he stared right into her eyes and asked:

"What are you doing to me?"

He didn't recognize his voice.

Smiling wider, she asked:

"Is it working?"

Harry didn't answer, just kept staring into her eyes, wordless.

She stood and walked in front of him, slightly too close. No one in the common room seemed to notice, as they hadn't remarked their chitchat. Seamus was still complaining over his latest homework. Ginny was still eating Dean's face in a corner. Lavender still talked to Parvati animatedly, although he thought he had seen her judge them, a spark in her eyes. Harry cared exactly the same for all three scenes. He wanted Hermione to hold his head against her belly and caress his hair. It couldn't be much more innocent, he surely wouldn't dream about it tonight.

Hermione kneeled before him, too far to exchange breath, too close not to notice how she moistened her lips, how they shone –pink and smooth- to the firelight.

"Why resist?" she breathed out, and he breathed in; the treacle tart aroma was stronger than ever. "You know we have to try. You know it might save your life. And over all, you know you want it" she breathed again, softer. "I love you, Harry. I do. I want this too. Please don't resist me?"

He was about to grab her and kiss her on the spot, not caring about all the eyes in the room. Hell she was persuasive. Best actress he had ever seen.

"Don't play with that" he answered, sec.

"I'm not playing" and she sounded sincere.

When she stood and walked away, he actually reached for her hand before forcing his own to lie beside him on the sofa.

* * *

"She has grown on you."

"What?" Harry said distractedly, following Hermione with his gaze as she exited the infirmary.

"Hermione, you like her now!"

The Survivor turned to face Ron. He kept thinking he wished he was still wearing the quidditch outfit. Confusedly acknowledging that he wanted to impress someone, he still wasn't sharp enough to realize that that someone didn't love quidditch and had most certainly seen him in hospital gowns more than once. His attention came back to the present slowly. Too slowly for him to respond to Ron's comment. The oldest boy was all red, if he was blushing or angry Harry wouldn't know.

"I knew it! I knew she'd convince you! Brilliant, she is. She succeeds in everything" Ron muttered remorsefully.

"You speak as if I didn't like her before…"

"But now you are checking her out, mate."

"I'm not!" Harry replied, offended.

"Yeah, you are!"

Was him? And had her uniform become two sizes smaller? And was she wearing that perfume again?

"You can tell me, mate."

A look at Ron, and Harry understood it would be wiser. He had thought Ron liked their friend, he had thought he'd feel betrayed if he allowed himself to like her and earned her, but it was nothing beside the betrayal Ron would feel if he and Hermione started sharing too many secrets.

"Well, she is bloody brilliant, and stubborn" Harry pointed slowly, in a careful whisper. "I think she's using amortentia as perfume. And you saw her, she's wearing make-up now. And those clothes!" he growled.

Ron was still blushing, but didn't seem all that offended. Harry would say he was even a little puzzled.

"Perfume? Make-up? What are you speaking about, mate?"

"She was just here! Didn't you notice it?"

It was just like Ron, to not do so. And yet he sounded fairly sure when he answered:

"Harry, she was all her. Nothing changed in her."

"You weren't paying attention."

"I don't pay attention in class, but since Lavender and I… since we…" Ron growled something Harry didn't understand and kept going, "I'm not that oblivious around girls. I would have noticed."

"Then it must be something only I can" Ron's arched eyebrow made him add: "something none of us know about, new magical make-up or something. No one knows magic like Hermione does… except maybe Dumbledore."

Ron looked as if he was trying not to laugh, and Harry felt slightly more relaxed. At least it wasn't about to become an issue with Ron. Even if he didn't like Lavender anymore.

"I have a mother and a sister. I'd know if that kind of make-up were in the market. Though I'm sure Fred and George could come up with…"

Only the next day, when Dumbledore received him in his office, he noticed exactly how much his mind had been occupied with Hermione lately.

* * *

When Snape told him to stay after the next lesson, he lowered his head as if having been hit. He had almost forgotten the professor was involved. The Slytherin waited until every other student had long left, scrutinizing him, until Harry felt as if he had shrank to the height of a house-elf.

"I would think" he started, cynically, "that the prospect of dying was less pleasurable to you than having intercourse."

"I can't put her through it. I can't put anyone through it."

"Granger has volunteered."

"How…?"

"Who else?" Snape cut.

"The amortentia! Was it you?"

Snape simply narrowed his eyes.

"I would certainly provide it in this case, but I doubt it would be necessary."

"So it hasn't been you…"

"You seem to believe that you are under its effects" Snape stated.

Harry was surprised to hear a tone of amusement in his voice.

"What withholds you, Potter?" when he didn't answer, the professor began hypothesizing: "You are not concerned about the purity of her blood. Is it the offspring? Abortives are well within the reach of my talent."

Harry felt dizzy. He must be speaking about this with his father, or his godfather, not with their school enemy.

"In fact" Snape was adding, "at fecundation you will have fulfilled the requirements. You will have given life" the professor clarified for him with a grimace. "The horcrux will be gone. Implantation afterwards is not required but for the offspring to survive. She wouldn't even have to be formally 'pregnant', according to the current definition. I do have some anti-implantation agents pre-boiled, though intrauterine devices and hormonal methods like muggle pills, I wouldn't recommend in this case. They do have some effects avoiding fecundation even if some others avoid implantation"

"But it would kill something... someone...? Human... mine and hers"

"Lots of children die, even after birth. I must confess to not see the point in all the fuss. At any rate, the death of the early embryo might be better for everyone involved... everyone born, that is."

Harry doubted Hermione would accept the offer. She would cavalier human embryos exactly as she did with house-elves. All the more reason to protect her from it. The idea of Hermione dropping school to raise his child was simply unacceptable.

A part of his mind registered the softness of the man's voice as he asked:

"Is your wish to marry her first?"

'Wow, wow, wow' Harry's mind exclaimed in decreasing tone, depressurizing. The discussion had long become too serious for him. Marry? Abortives? He hadn't given any of those a single thought. He tried not think too hard about those, even now.

"A child is not a reason to marry" the professor stated. "The only valid reason to do so, is what Dumbledore worships" Snape sounded as if he had just drank lemon juice.

"Love" Harry completed, and remembered what Hermione had said in that regard. "But, sir, if anyone learns that she's my… my… and carrying my…" he panted; well, that had gone well: he couldn't even pronounce the words. "Then they would slaughter her."

"Rather late for taking that into account, Potter" the professor said scornfully. "She is targeted for being a muggleborn, not to say, your friend" the f was prolonged as if he didn't like the taste of the word. "If there is a distinction between friends of opposite sex, and lovers, the Dark Lord is not one to make it. Unless there is some other even closer to you and even easier to slaughter."

Loving his friends as he did, Harry wouldn't befriend other people just to make an easier target of them. He shook his head and didn't give it another thought.

"At any case, I doubt I have to stress the fact that Miss Granger cannot die three times. She cannot be in much more danger than she is already. On the other hand, if you want her and the eventual child protected by your name and fortune, I have nothing to say to it" the softness was back, Harry thought it sounded like when he had pronounced his mom's name. "If that's the matter, I can arrange… things."

"You can" Harry said, more a question than anything else.

"You would be amazed at who performs certain ceremonies in times of war,"

Was Snape telling him that he would marry them? Him and… Hermione? He couldn't start to process it.

"Whatever it is, solve it" the professor cut, now sharp and cold, as always, and sat behind his desk. "Dismissed".

* * *

**Preview**:

Then, there was a pop, too close, and something stepped on his left foot, but he didn't care because he was too busy smelling flowers and treacle tart. All he could see was bushy warm honeyed hair. Her shriek made him aware that she was slightly surprised, but no one else heard it.

* * *

I'm eager to know how you feel. Please, **review**.


	3. To care

"It's simple! Even for me! Sleep with her, often and long enough that she'd get pregnant" Ron explained in the same tone Hermione had used to teach him the latest spell.

Harry flinched and looked around, scanning the common room and sighing when no one seemed to hear his friend.

"I can't do that!" he answered in a whisper, hoping Ron would imitate.

"Wait, you mean you can't… can't…?"

It took a second for Harry to understand.

"No!" he answered, scandalized. "I think I can, yet I can't."

Great, now he had him wondering about his manhood.

"Then what's the problem, mate? I'd kill to be in your place!"

"No, you wouldn't."

"Yes, I would" Ron said vehemently, his teeth clenched.

Harry thought he detected some bitterness there. He shook his head, but didn't say another word. He knew Ron wouldn't like being a horcrux himself.

"I still don't get it" Ron protested.

"Of course not, Ron" Hermione said, rolling her eyes even as she joined them.

Both boys looked at her and fell silent.

"It's not hard to guess at what you were speaking about" and when Harry turned around again, she added: "Don't worry, the others weren't paying attention."

Harry struggled to fix his gaze in his potions book –now displaying embryonary ingredients, how accurate.

"What Harry is saying, Ron" she lectured, "is that he cares for me, and he is worried about the implications of this deal to my life. I know you would be, too, if you applied what you know about thinking five chess moves ahead, to real life."

"I do care about you" Ron protested.

"Exactly my point" she added. "You just aren't thinking. Harry, for once, is the one thinking too much."

Ron muttered something and shifted uncomfortably.

"And what Ron is saying, Harry" by the tone of her voice, he knew she had turned to him, and the temperature of the room lifted several degrees, "is that thinking too much will get killed not only you, but probably also most of the Wizarding World. That prophecy isn't fair. If He can live without you, and won't die as long as you live, then… well, I don't like our chances. Specially mine. I'm a mudblood, you know…"

"See? That's exactly what I meant!" Ron claimed.

Harry wasn't listening. Her last words had evoked his previous interview with Snape, that he had been trying hard to forget. Enough to make him feel slightly shaky.

"So now that we have understood each other, what do you think about the Room of Requirement?"

"I guess I should go meet…" Ron interrupted quickly.

"Don't!" Harry asked.

He didn't know if he would have the strength to resist her, all by himself. The common room was almost empty, after all.

"Do" Hermione ordered, and Ron left in a hurry.

His levels of anxiety rising up to the astronomy tower –or rather, to what was seen from there-, Harry closed the book and tried to escape behind him, only to feel a tug to his neck. Hermione had grabbed his cloak.

"Don't be a coward" she provoked.

"I warn you. I have learned several contraceptive spells, and don't mind using them."

"Only one should do" she pointed quietly.

He finally sat to the other end of the sofa.

"I don't bite… hard… you know?" she commented.

He heard the smile in her voice. It was familiar, relaxing.

After a second, carefully, very carefully, she neared him and laid her head on his shoulder. Her smell surrounded him. He tilted his head slightly, unable to decide if he wanted to nuzzle her hair, or look away. Not aware or caring, she made herself more comfortable before sighing contentedly. Harry shivered, on edge.

Eventually, her warmth soothed him until his thoughts drifted unimpeded towards Snape's suggestions.

Marriage.

The mere thought took his breath away. Not in the good sense. Not yet, anyway.

The image it brought to his brain, was that of him waiting before a minister, Ron beaming beside him, as a smiling girl whose face was quickly taking Hermione's features, walked down the aisle. He could barely see himself holding her hands.

Though now that he really allowed himself to imagine it, it didn't feel that weird, he held her hand every day and she was warm and smelled nicely. Eyeing her, he shyly confessed to himself that she would make a beautiful bride. A wonderful partner in life, too. She was already his partner, after all. He could totally see the three of them in those roles, and now, he had to make a conscious effort to not dwell on that scene.

It should include also the bride's parents, and her father wouldn't allow a marriage at seventeen.

"Penny for your thoughts?" she asked.

A second, and then:

"I do care for you, Hermione" he started bluntly, not looking at her. "I want you to have choices… to marry at the proper time… to be given away by you dad… I can't knock you up and walk away. I can't."

"Okay" she said slowly, stretching the vocals even as she shifted, probably casting a silent muffliato so no one else would hear. "Why don't we start by the basics? Kissing or something?"

"We'd be doing all of that to get there" he pointed out.

"Well, it would be shocking for you" She smiled, "but biologically speaking, everyone does all of that to get there."

"Not the same" he muttered. "You should be able to choose with whom you get there."

"Don't be overly dramatic, Harry. I don't think I could choose better."

That made him blush.

"I'd really want to hug you right now" she added vehemently.

He'd love that. He'd really really love that. So he quietly let his hand rest on her back, wishing they were alone, even as he muttered:

"I can't just use you, even to get rid of a horcrux."

"That's… actually sweet, Harry…"

He still hadn't looked into her eyes again, but he could imagine her perfectly: her eyes shining with sparks of gold reflecting the firelight, and filled with her impressive brightness. He was so weary, of all of that. Of fighting her. Of not wanting to fight anymore.

The next day, as they both took in the amazing view from the astrology tower, they were still arguing about it.

"You shouldn't" Harry was telling her firmly. "This is morally dark grey at any case. And you are the whitest person I have ever had the privilege to meet" he whispered fervently.

He had done it. He had actually done it. He had realized, all by himself, what she had tried so hard to hide even from herself: the inherent darkness in treating a child -even one that wasn't yet conceived- as a product, even if it was to save someone who would in turn save so many others. Something she had plainly refused to acknowledge, because she simply wouldn't be just and impartial in this case. Openmouthed, she stared at his profile, feeling behind her sternum a warmth that slithered and burned. A sort of awe, at the light that was his essence, a light that could recognize darkness with no rational thought. Once again, it put her brain to shame, and she was drawn to that light as a moth. She wondered if this was love.

He felt something warm on his cheek and turned to see her pulling away, a smile in her lips. He no longer cared if someone was looking. About to lose himself in her eyes, he struggled to keep enough consciousness to keep going. What was he speaking about, anyway? He had to look away to be able to think again.

On their way from the Great Hall –Harry no longer thought Ron's absence was causal-, looking around carefully, making sure no one would hear, he insisted.

"If we… if you… if we… conceive…" he choked, "people will know, Hermione. It'll show eventually. We won't be able to explain it, you'll be just another stupid girl and her inexperienced one night stand. The people in school… they'll call you names… remember fourth year? I can't even think…"

"Harry, putting that in balance with your death, do you think I care?"

"You should" Harry spit.

She shook her head.

"You don't even know if it'll work, if we are… if you are…if the horcrux will let you... " she sighed. "You heard Snape."

The idea of not being able to have a child wasn't that weird to him. He never thought he would live enough to try.

"But what if I am" Harry sighed.

And finally, that night, as they left Hagrid's place, out of a blue, he dared mention:

"Snape said he'd marry us."

Hermione froze, and Harry stopped in his track, barely turning to her, not enough to see her anyway. She was so silent for so long that Harry would have thought she had dissapparated, if he wasn't so aware of her warmth beside him. Finally, he dared stare into her eyes.

"I know it's not what we'd want, Hermione…" he started carefully. "I know we don't love each other that way… You don't even have to decide now… But if –and only if- I were to agree to try and have a child with you –which is mad, even in thought-" he chuckled, "and it worked, the only way I'd have to protect you from the bunch of mad sick b-witches in this world, is by giving you my name… I don't mean it literally!" he exclaimed, seeing her expression. "You can keep your last name. But marriage would also give you the place and economic means to raise a kid without putting that kind of burden on your parents' backs, even if I were… if I were…"

"To die" she whispered.

They both knew that the horcrux was not the only danger he faced. Their gazes joined, and she nodded.

"That must be the worst proposal I've heard of in my entire life" she sighed, and he smiled back. She did know how to lighten the mood when she wasn't trying. "Harry, I'd marry you on the spot if it'd save your life, and thank Merlin for making it easy" she said vehemently; he knew she meant every single word. "And honestly, at this point I might marry you even if it wasn't required…"

Harry felt something warm and wet behind his chest and south, but didn't allow himself to ponder it, its ramifications. She probably wasn't serious, he decided. She had been trying to seduce him into this, for his sake, and he was positive it was a real good reason for her to go the extremes. For lying. Even to him. Especially to him.

Maybe precisely because of that, he found the strength to give her options:

"There's much we don't know" he started, "honestly we don't know if I'm the only horcrux. Probably not, seeing how Voldemort looks like. We'd destroy the others first. See how it goes. Maybe I'll die anyway…"

"Don't even think of dying…!"

"You could date anyone else in the meantime…" he interrupted, his mind hovering over the words, knowing he had to spit them, to give her the choice, even as bile rose to his throat and he almost choked with them: "have proper firsts, with someone you really like…"

"Stop!" she cut, her voice vibrating with anger, and she paced towards him menacingly. "Stop. Pushing. Me. Away. I'm not lying, Harry. Nor am I waiting until the last minute. Getting pregnant can take an hour or up to two years –medical fact-. We don't have that kind of time. And I do like you" she whispered as an afterthought.

The moonlight made her shine beautifully, filtering through her hair, sparkling in her eyes: He was only half listening to her words, as she kept going.

"You don't have to marry me for it. Despite the ancient castle and all, we are almost in the XXIst century, single moms aren't lapidated on the streets. We don't have to take it that seriously. It's starting to freeze us both…"

"Hermione, marriage isn't more serious than having a child together."

"But both… concepts must be more serious than only one of them" she claimed adamantly.

They stood side by side for a moment still –him, half turning; her, staring right into his eyes, defying despite the fear her words evoked. Suddenly she came close, and without warning, pecked him on the corner of the lips, and walked ahead. He followed her with his gaze before tailing her, with legs almost too weak to support him anymore.

* * *

Harry was fairly sure that Ron had put something on his drink. First, because he felt amazing: his head was all fluffy as if filled with hippogriffs' feathers, and his heart beat slightly faster. Even seeing Draco walk in the opposite direction, skipping class again, didn't change his mood. There was no way he would feel that about her all of a sudden, no way he'd walk beside her and eat beside her and borrow her homework and then out of the blue want to be trapped alone with her in a broom closet for an entire night. Second, because he was overly aware of Hermione's presence even now. The class dismissed, she was still profiting of the temporal suspension of the anti-Apparition wards to practice. Arms crossed and leaning on the wall, partially hidden behind a tapestry, he watched her succeed, as the rest of the room emptied of students and muttered complaints, until only a few Hufflepuffs –and Hermione, of course- remained. He was so aware of her that he thought he could see her molecules moving through the air towards the apparition hoop. Third, because he had seen Ron put something on his pumpkin juice, had even accused him –receiving only denial and protests, of course-. Why had he swallowed it anyway, was beyond his reach. He wasn't about to admit that he needed an excuse to stare at Hermione all day long without feeling guilty about it.

There it was, that smile, again. The witch had turned only slightly and, seeing him from the corner of her eyes, she had smiled as she returned to her place. He considered holding the left side of his chest, lest the organ leapt its way out of it. And then, there was a pop, too close, and something stepped on his left foot, but he didn't care because he was too busy smelling flowers and treacle tart. All he could see was bushy warm honeyed hair. Her shriek made him aware that she was slightly surprised, but no one else heard it.

She stepped back, slightly, further behind the tapestry. He saw her pant, but that only made him focus on her lips. Her eyes were wide open; he thought he could drown in them, and not care.

"Brilliant, Hermione" he smiled. "You managed to Apparate all over again."

Just then he noticed they were fully behind the tapestry, as alone as two persons could be in a room full of people that ignored and didn't care about their whereabouts, and he had her against the wall. Had she done it purposefully?

"But I missed the hoop!" she whispered. "I guess I wasn't focused in that destin…"

He saw her eyes open further in realization. He saw her pupils, enlarged, reflecting nothing but his features, and decided he'd love to keep it that way. Forever.

The kiss started as awkwardly as it was supposed to be. After the first impulse, Harry found his lips brushing Hermione's sweet, trembling ones and wondered what he was supposed to do next. What he had done with Cho just didn't seem enough. There was, of course, the fact that their agreement didn't necessarily include kisses, and he was frantic for a moment, until he felt her arms surround his neck, and she sighed contentedly, narrowing her eyes in a way that made his stomach leap and be transfigured into a net full of pixies. Then he realized he was actually savoring her lips, and they actually tasted like treacle tart –apparently having eaten it at breakfast-, and he reflexively gave free reign to his hunger. Of treacle tart. Of her. Drawing her lower lip, nibbling at it softly, he realized that to kiss wasn't that hard after all, if you really, really liked what you were tasting.

"Apparition class is over" McGonagall announced. "The wards are back in place."

They parted, panting. Luckily, still no one had seen them. Harry thought stupidly that Hermione might just Apparate them both from the Great Hall and straight into the Room of Requirement; then realized that, even if the Room of Requierement didn't have Apparition wards –and he doubted it-, the Great Hall already did. Then wondered why he had thought of the Room of Requierement in the first place. The wards hadn't been his primary concern.

"Let's go, Harry" Hermione whispered, lowering her head as they mixed with the last students leaving the room.

The way to the Gryffindor common room was everything but awkward. He was real distracted with what had happened, and she was blushing and keeping her head low. But they were holding hands, and Harry felt as if he was floating. All that hippogriff's feathers, surely. Ron and himself must have a talk about amortentia. Later. First, he'd rather enjoy it.

All the time he was overly aware of what this witch –this incredible, bright, devoted woman- had told him. "I don't think I could choose better", "At this point I might marry you even if it wasn't required", "I do like you". If he left himself –just for a second- believe it, she might not only save his life at great cost to hers, but also give him a family. He couldn't remember having a family. It made him dizzy with a feeling very much akin to joy.

Ron eyed them once, and dragged them to a corner of the common room.

"What happened?" he asked.

Harry and Hermione looked at each other, and away. If Ron had noticed, then it was written in both of their foreheads. Luckily they had come through almost empty passageways.

"OK, I won't ask again" Ron said, and he was beaming.

When Hermione went to the loo, supposedly to wash her face, really to cool down –all three knew it-, Harry eyed Ron and asked:

"Was it a love potion?"

"What?"

"What you slipped into my drink. Was it amortentia?"

"Mate" Ron said, smiling, "I haven't seen the thing ever since that class with Slughorn."

"Then… then…"

"It's all you, mate" Ron whispered. "Can't say I blame you, she's amazing…" Harry's gaze had that quality that made Ron look slightly scared. "But she's all yours, I promise! She doesn't seem to need amortentia to fall for you, herself."

* * *

Preview:

But there in the loo, as she braced on the sink and stared at her image in the mirror, seeing her wet face; as she licked the drops of water that fell to her lips and remembered how he tasted; then, she realized that it all might be starting to get out of her hands.

* * *

Thank you for your constructiva reviews. I'm literally hanging from my phone, waiting for them.


	4. Not love

It didn't take Harmione that long to realize that she was falling in her own trap. If that was the word for it. By staying near Harry –even more than she used to-, going by the book in every seduction strategy she had ever read about, she had grown, of course, overly aware of him. Of his attention or his lack of it. Her mood climbing when he was staring at her, over the moon when he looked dumbfounded by what he saw –that mixture of confused and enthralled with just a hint of repressed hunger-; and dropping to the underground when he wasn't. It had a lot to do with vanity, really. Not that it was real wrong, in her case. After all, she didn't need any of those reactions to love her friend as deeply as she did.

But there in the loo, as she braced on the sink and stared at her image in the mirror, seeing her wet face; as she licked the drops of water that fell to her lips and remembered how he tasted; then, she realized that it all might be starting to get out of her hands.

"You getting in trouble, dear" the mirror asked. "Look awfully flushed"

"Shut up" she whispered back.

They loved each other as friends. They were building a sexual tension that just now she acknowledged had always been there, and that was good under the circumstances. Then, how was she to know if that equaled romantic love? And what if she made a mistake in that regard? She was still going to get pregnant with his child –even if before today she hadn't even kissed anyone, even if she wasn't ready, even if she had spent sixteen years trying to focus on her marks and knowing that love relationships were even worse for them that constantly getting into trouble with her friends-. That was still going to mess up her life, badly. She didn't know what she was going to tell to her parents –that still wanted her to go to the university, and would settle for nothing less than a work at the ministry-; even if she gave the baby for adoption, they would still be awfully disappointed on her. What worried her the most, was that she didn't care. She wasn't sure of how long that state of mind would affect her. She would probably wake up one day and realize that she suddenly cared very much, but her life was too twisted for her to fix it.

What if she fell in love with her best friend?

What if he didn't love her back? What if, after those nights, she wasn't ready to let go of him? What if he wanted to go? What if, on the contrary, he kept her near without loving her? As a wife? As a friend?

"And, Merlin, what if he falls for someone else?"

Her stomach was in knots when she thought that, it couldn't be a good signal.

Maybe it was all the sexual tension, messing with her mind.

She pressed her tights together self-consciously, and avoided her gaze in the mirror. She had thought of intercourse a lot more than she was used to. Probably several times more than she had in all the rest of her teenage years. Plotting and planning did took its toll on her. What had been plan, became fantasies and dreams that would have her tossing and turning the entire night. If she was at home, she would do some research on "Nymphomaniacs". She couldn't keep certain thoughts from her mind, especially when being alone.

Especially when being with him.

This morning –she wondered if he had noticed-, while handling him a dish, their hands had brushed, and she had remembered that same hand holding hers against the bed as they made love in her sleep. She had caught herself watching him hungrily long after he had turned around.

Last afternoon, he had stood behind her, grabbing ingredients from the store cupboard. When she had leaned slightly back, it hadn't been a strategy. It had been yearning.

She couldn't stand it anymore.

They were going a lot faster than they had, had circumstances been different.

They couldn't fix it. They were already against the clock. She would have pushed him harder and sooner if she hadn't been in that moment of the cycle in which intercourse would be messier and less fructuous. They had to start trying to conceive. Tonight if he would allow it.

And she couldn't wait till then.

Rationally, she understood feelings were dangerous. It was enough of a paradox that the more he loved her, the more he'd avoid her touch.

"Keep it light" she advised to her reflection.

"That's my girl" the mirror answered.

She didn't think it had understood.

Back at the common room, she noticed Harry looked extremely pleased and yet, surely much more innocent that she felt.

"I'm covering for him tonight" Ron whispered to her, looking at their friend.

"Thank you" she whispered back.

* * *

"You shouldn't use asphodel there, Harry. When mixed with dragon blood, it's unpredictable…"

"But it's written right here!" he protested, shoving his potions book towards Hermione, who sat in the same sofa, to his right, as he quoted: "'The mixture of asphodel with phoenix ash boils silently with a golden…"

"I still don't trust that book." Hermione crossed her arms, pushing her lips tightly in a line as she leaned back on the sofa.

The slight air current it created smelled like treacle tart, and he found himself wordless and breathless as she continued, seemingly unaware:

"You can't see its brain, just like in Riddle's diary. The one that wrote the comments is not the author whose name is written in the cover, the one that actually responds for the book."

Furious or lusting, the fact is that he didn't notice the groans or the movement as the last shadows in the common room left for the dorms, quietly pushed by Ron, who winked towards Hermione as he disappeared upstairs. There was still silence until Harry somehow found his wit:

"Hermione, you are acting like when the firebolt came."

"And I was right. It was Sirius'…"

"No, you were wrong: he wasn't evil."

"You also thought he was! By the way, that handwriting is awfully familiar too" she pointed to the book in question. "In any case, since you are top of our potions class, I really don't know why you keep asking me about homework…"

"Because I trust you?" he answered impulsively. "Because you are brilliant and I love you?"

She blinked and he thought he had seen her smile slightly –a tiny, suppressed smile- before he heard his own words and blushed. For a second, he thought she was about to ask: 'say that again?' He opened his mouth, unsure if he must make the statement pass for what it maybe was: a declaration of friendly love; but no word came. Looking around as he messed with his hair, he saw without really registering it that they were now alone before the cracking fire, and when he turned to her, other feelings rushed through her eyes. He was no expert, but he thought there had been sorrow and fear, and then she was gone.

He breathed, closing his eyes and supporting his back on the couch. Had he hurt her? How? Why?

Then he froze. A warm current ran near his neck, once, twice, thrice, rhythmically, and the smell of treacle tart was stronger than ever.

She was right behind him.

"I am honored, Harry" she whispered in his ear. "I am". Her tone was light yet her voice huskier than ever, as if a vampire had fed her blood. "But right now, I have no use for your love, if it can kill you. What I want from you, is lust."

The last word sounded strange in her tongue. Strange, and intoxicating. That it was Hermione who pronounced it, made him close his eyes and swallow hard, vaguely hoping the warmth would move just a little bit to reach the point it barely teased. Oh, yes. Lust, he could give. Even if he wasn't really sure of its shape, he had the feeling that it had the color of her skin under the firelight, he knew its flavor, its smell; if its texture was anywhere close to that of her hand in his, he sure craved it, more than he was able to acknowledge in his waking hours of confused daydreams. He remembered her sigh of contentment as he kissed her today, and wanted to turn it into moans. He just didn't know how to accomplish that. And he had to be sure. He had to be dead sure that he could. With her, there was no place for failure.

"Look at me, Harry" she asked.

Gently guided by her hand in his chin, the wizard complied, meeting hypnotic eyes where firelight danced freely. She was an enchantress, in every sense of the word. He sometimes forgot that fact. His hand stumbled upon a piece of forgotten parchment, and a part of him wondered fleetingly how this had gotten that intense, that fast.

"Can't you see that I want you?"

That figurative beast in his chest woke up, teeth shining in a menacing gesture that might just be a smile.

"Trust what you feel."

"Strange that you'd say that."

They both were surprised to hear his voice –absent and dreamy, yet his-. Openmouthed, they stared at each other, as wood cracked in the fireplace. He tried to remember that she was his friend, the one that had helped him get to the stone, and to his godfather in third year, and to several answers he had truly needed to face the challenges of the Tournament, and to the Ministry of Magic. She helped him. Always. But she was her own person as well. What that person –the one behind his friend- wanted, he wasn't sure. Was it safe to trust that she was his to take? Not just as a friend? Not just because of being his friend? Her eyes seemed eager to let him read that in them. Firelight was reflected in them, as was his image.

"What do you want, scientific proof?" she asked, not provoking.

She sounded serious.

He swallowed.

"Then look, Harry, really look at me. What do you see?"

Words fought for his attention. None was pronounced. Beauty. Warmth. Memories. All kinds of details, he saw in her. How to describe all of them?

She was smiling now, as if she could read his mind. Probably she could. He must look like the biggest of fools, confused and enthralled by his best friend. That vague certainty didn't make him cringe. It was safe, with her.

"Look at my pupils. How are them?"

He swallowed again, staring at the big rings of darkness in her normally warm brown eyes.

"Enlarged?" he muttered, so low and with so twisted a tongue that she mustn't have been able to understand it, yet she beamed.

"And what does it tell you?"

"You're beautiful" he breathed out, not breaking the link between their eyes.

She breathed. In truth, she found hard to do so with her throat so closed, and her chest so filled with an emotion very alike to joy. Yet, she eventually found her scientific voice, and explained:

"That's because your animal brain is telling you that I'm ready to mate."

Harry didn't understood a thing. The eerie light painted shadows in her skin. Enthralling. He stood by what he had just said. Just 'beautiful' seemed too simple a word to embrace all he felt she was. But his mind was too occupied with her, to find complex words. So occupied, in fact, that he only knew she had reached for his hand, when she grabbed it gently, taking it to her neck. The softness of her skin in his, was overwhelming, only surpassed by her warmth. It took him a moment to understand what she wanted him to assess.

"That's the beating of my heart" she whispered.

The words vibrated under the pulse he now felt with the sensitive tips of his fingers. A pulse almost too quick to count, and too erratic. He would have called Mme Pomfrey, had he had the brain to think of that right then.

"It's beating for you, Harry" she sounded vehement.

His eyes flied from his fingers in her neck –such a vision, almost hypnotic, as the colors, hers and his, mixed beautifully- to her eyes. If he almost understood what she had just said, it was only because he had heard that phrase too many times, attached to teenage poems and romantic comedies that knew nothing of the twirl of fire it set to his entrails.

"Do you need more proof?"

He didn't even understand what his bright friend was speaking about. Hermione had taken his hand to her cheek, and now tilted her head slightly, letting him feel the softness of her skin, and above all, her temperature, so high that it thawed something essential in him, releasing something else. Even when she narrowed her eyes, contented, they never left his. Then she kissed his wrist, and he thought she herself must have felt his pulse, for it had everything but jumped to greet her lips.

Her soft, moistened lips, that he had tasted only once.

So in a violent yet fluid motion, the wizard kneeled on the sofa, reaching them now, almost biting them in want. Her shiver shook him as well –funny, he hadn't felt it sooner-, and before fully intending to, his other hand came to surround her waist, slightly too low in her back. Not that she protested. Her lips opened slightly, only to nibble his own lips, as he devoured hers, captivated by her sudden compliance, her timidity, when she had been everything but the prey until now. When her legs gave up, it was his hold what kept her standing, until he dragged her over the back of the sofa and into his lap.

So sweet. So wet. So tasty. Letting him take control, he who had none, even over his own life. He didn't hear his own moan, but heard hers, and parted from her lips, awe-struck, to see her gasping and her cloudy eyes in that millisecond before her head lied on his shoulder. Struggling to see her face, he still didn't miss the weight of her body, that pinned him to the sweetest side of reality as nothing else would. His arms barely hesitated before encircling her.

Yet, she had other ideas.

Hermione's hand came to hold his wrist, forcing it to change trajectory with the soft command tenderness gives. It now lied on her chest, circumventing her left breast, yet letting him feel the frantic beating of her heart under it. He felt his beating just as strong under her ear. He knew, at that moment, that Dumbledore was right. Love had to be the strongest thing on Earth. The trickiest, too.

Yet, he had been rendered speechless, so how was he to explain it to her? And why would it be needed? She sure knew it anyway. That he adored her. That, even now, there was an alarm shrieking inside of him, telling him to leave, so she wouldn't be harmed, tainted by his cursed existence on stolen time. That he was too weak and confused to listen to it, loving her as he did. That he wished he was stronger, even as he yearned to let this win over his reason.

"Do you need more proof?" she asked, even huskier.

He didn't, but how was he to tell her? He seemed to have lost all power of speech.

"Please don't be shocked" he thought he heard her mutter –maybe not intending him to hear, at all-, as she let his hand move just slightly over her chest, so he brushed her breast, and his breath hitched on his throat. Eyeing her swiftly, and though it was hard to tell by the fire, he thought she was blushing, but she didn't push him away. Tentatively, his hand adjusted to the weight and size of it, a match so perfect as the texture and flavor of her lips was to his. The peak was hard as stone. He was dying to touch it with his fingers, but didn't dare. This was too much as it was. Her hip was in close contact with the painful swelling into his pants, so even if none of them acknowledged it, he thought she must know how this affected him. It was embarrassing. He would have left, had he been in his right state of mind, had he had the slightest clue of how to do so without embarrassing both of them further.

"This is another sign of… of arousal" she lectured, the hesitation in her voice unmistakable. She was brave. Even her enemies conceded her that. There was still a moment before she asked, her voice trembling slightly: "Do you like this?"

He chuckled darkly, a sound he didn't recognize in himself. If he liked this.

Her face was still in that blind point under his chin, so even knowing her as he did, he couldn't say what she was thinking as her breast filled his hand. What must he do now? To touch her as he wanted to –badly- was surely unfriendly. If he still wanted to reject her–he wasn't sure if he could do that anymore- he sure should go away. Now. He didn't even give it a thought. In the steamy state of mind he was in, he could think of nothing but to please her, but he didn't want to shock her, himself.

"Do you need more proof?"

'There is more?' He wondered as his Adam's apple went up and down his throat. He couldn't utter a single word.

Even so slowly, as if to give him time to cringe, she held his hand and moved it south, over her pull, her skirt, and then on the warm soft skin of the inside of her legs. Harry remembered to breathe, but just for a second, before she took his hand up her right thigh, feeling the soft hair in the inside, close, ever so close to… No, he couldn't think of that. She couldn't be thinking of that, herself, could she?

He still wondered, when she placed his fingers right over her most intimate flesh, a sole layer of fabric between him and what he really craved, and he felt the moistness there, and something inside of him knew, just knew, that he needed no more proof of anything.

"I do want you" she stated, as if it was necessary. "I want you to do to me what I know you have been dreaming of."

Maybe it was her hand what guided his under her panties, maybe it wasn't, but then he felt in his fingers the creamy evidence of her desire for him, and this time he cringed. This was a turning point. He still didn't know. He still didn't want her to be hurt. He feared he had hurt her, already, when she just stayed there, panting, as his hand hovered slightly on her thigh. He took it quickly to the sofa, as if to hide it, as if that could vanish what had already transpired between them. She still didn't show her face.

"I know you want me, Harry"

He shifted uncomfortably, her hip brushing his arousal every time she moved, ever so lightly. It made electric currents run up his spine, as if having touched a live wire, just… softer.

"So let's try this. I'll… I'll touch… myself… That way… that way it won't make you feel responsible right? I'll do it right here. You can stay and watch, you can join, or you can leave. Completely free."

She was shivering again, and he still hadn't seen her face, but he was as if petrified. He couldn't understand what she was saying. I couldn't be it, right?

Then she reached her wand, and cast three quick spells for isolation, and he suspected it was.

* * *

Preview:

_Later, he would reflect on the awe he felt at the time –almost as when walking through the gates of Hogwarts for the first time, wonder and freedom and everything golden and shiny-. Now, there was no space for reflection _

* * *

I don't know what to feel for this Hermione, if not a bit of awe. She's so determined, even when the result is so much less than ideal for her. But this is unfamiliar ground. Please do tell if the characters still feel like themselves.


	5. Tonight

Disclaimer: You Know Who owns Harry Potter and everything

Author's note: This chapter might shock some of you, and I'm sorry if it does. It's not my cup of tea either. Anyway, I didn't want to be too predictable, then I realized that touching oneself might be different in the Wizarding World than it is for muggles. Consider it a warning. I hope you don't hate it, and review.

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**"Tonight"**

The black shadow cut against the velvet sky was barely visible from the stairs, but Ron's gaze found it in the much brighter common room as if he had been looking for it. He probably had. The blackhead's whereabouts had a lot to do with Ron's uncharacteristic insomnia, after all.

"Harry?" Ron asked unnecessarily.

He got no answer.

"Mate? Is it you?"

It was him, indeed, but Ron must go past the couch and the welcoming firelight to where the shadow stood, to be sure. There was still no answer. The boy-who-lived seemed rather enthralled in the portion of the sky he was staring at. Ron couldn't read his expression.

"Is everything right, mate? Where is Hermione?"

Still no answer. Ron laid his hand on the other boy's shoulder and just then Harry started and turned, eyes still unfocused. He looked worried. Ron shifted and it was a long time until he dared ask.

"What happened? Because something happened, right?"

Harry opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, looking strangely as a fish right out of the water.

"You two… You did it, right?"

Harry shivered and focused at once.

"I'm… not sure."

The redheaded wizard actually took a step back.

"What do you mean 'not sure'?" he asked, sounding deeply offended.

Harry opened his mouth, but then shook his head, frowning.

"It's… private…"

"Bull-shit, mate! How can you 'not be sure' of having…"

And despite Ron's volume, Harry's thoughts drifted from the current screaming to the events of the previous night, and shivered with… Pleasure? Guilt? Shame?

* * *

_The golden firelight flickered on the enchantress' skin as she lied on the opposite couch, eyes fixed in him, yet lost. Her white blouse was open to the navel, letting him see the edges of her brassier, its disturbed position a reminder of her own early caresses; he thought he could see darker skin just where the fabric ended, and his hands had forgotten how to unclench._

_He must leave, now. Yet, he couldn't. He wanted to go to her, so badly; but he mustn't. His muscles trembled, tense, unresolved, as his gaze avoided what he nonetheless saw –couldn't really decide not to watch- near the limits of his visual field: her hands, lost under the edge of her skirt, moving lazily, presumably between the folds of her own intimacy –unexplored terrain. His fingers twitched, itching to touch what she was touching, to explore. To feel. To make her feel. To make her scream his name in pleasure._

_He couldn't._

_Why couldn't he?_

_She moaned, and he reflected the sound quietly, shifting, seeking contact against the hot bulge in his pants. He was so ready… he'd eventually come, even without the rubbing he so craved. But it was tempting –oh, so tempting- to unleash his clothes, to rub his intimate flesh as she did –or better yet: against hers-. To leave for the loo was unthinkable. He'd do it here… let her watch…_

_One of her hands neared her mouth, gathering saliva before going back to its original place. The thought of mixed secretions turned him on, strangely, even as his gaze followed her other hand –shining with moistness to the firelight- towards the flesh just under her brassier. Her head leaned back, lips open in an absent gesture of pleasure. The stretched arm moved, slow and steady, making him all too aware of what the corresponding hand did, further down._

_He didn't really notice the pants unfastening themselves, as he watched, mesmerized, a single drop of sweat roll gently from her neck and to the valley between her breasts._

_"I'd want some help" she asked, her voice husky yet childish. He started, even as something warm and tender rolled in his chest, a reminder that it was her, of all women, who was here, now, with him, showing him something even more intimate that lovemaking._

_He still didn't move._

_So, without as much as a warning, colors in her turned and rolled until there was a second Hermione over the first one. He gasped, intrusion startling him, just before remembering whispered chitchats in the darkness of the boys' dorms. Yes, he had heard of this. Dreams, mostly; not many witches could master the spell. Not one of his own wet dreams: he was too intimate for two women and too muggle for magical temporal copies of the same one. Yet, as he saw the second Hermione* lean over the first one, unceremoniously uncovering a breast to suck on the nipple, he couldn't but feel his arousal harden still, and wondered how much more he would be able to take._

_The second Hermione was undressed just where the first one was covered -nude bottom, liquid shimmering dripping from the darkness between its thighs, upper fabric that covered nearly everything but the firm breasts, enhancing stony wine-colored peaks. He couldn't but watch hungrily for a second before averting his gaze. The copy's state did nothing to satisfy his hunger for the original's nudity; if anything, it enhanced it. There was no avoiding the slurping sounds that filled the space around him. The edges of his vision field caught the copy's forearm surrounding the original's waist, and Hermione nearly hanging from it._

_The wizard didn't see the second copy until it was literally over him. He did notice it gently removing his underwear, but he merely stared at it before looking at Hermione again. The blackhead had forgotten he was supposed not to look. A copy's hand tore her underwear, and the girl gasped, as if surprised, then her copy's fingers lightly touched her inner flesh. Finally –he felt, more than saw-, the index penetrated it as the thumb found her clit, and the original concentrated in gasping, her own hands laying uselessly as her magic worked to arouse her further. That copy lowered its head, moving to the bottom of the bed, but the second he suspected its intentions, he felt his own flesh be surrounded by moist warmth. Her gasp came merely an instant later. He didn't manage to think of backing off; it wasn't really his friend, after all. As the boy stared, mesmerized, his manhood disappear into a mouth that was, for all senses and purposes, Hermione's, a third copy joined Hermione's head and kneeled; by the time he looked back, it was kissing her neck while fingering her nipples, as the first copy's head moved between her thighs, hands gently brushing the insides of them. It was increasingly hard to focus on anything. Hermione shifted, hips almost in the air where the first copy held her bottom, and she moaned intermittently, every time making him nearly come._

_What was still holding it back, he didn't know until, unexpectedly, the warmth disappeared._

_He protested. Then he saw Hermione –the original one- walk towards him, astride him, all the time looking into his eyes, despite her violent blushing._

_"I won't last" he managed to utter._

_"Don't" she smiled, incoherently sweet, before growing serious again. She held his head in the calyx of her hands and pleaded: "Please, please let me…"_

_"Fuck, Hermione, just do it!" he groaned. He had been so close, for so long…_

_Then she moved, surrounding his manhood with her folds, and pushed down gently. He protested and held her as she removed herself, then she did it again. The third time, he struggled against the wall. His hands on her back pushed her down reflexively, but she fought it. The fourth time, he felt it break, heard her wail, thought it was pleasure –but there was nothing but pleasure in his universe. He was coming long before being deeply buried inside of her. Later, he would reflect on the awe he felt at the time –almost as when walking through the gates of Hogwarts for the first time, wonder and freedom and everything golden and shiny-. Now, there was no space for reflection as he rode wave after wave of pleasure, the biggest orgasm of his whole life, he was sure. She was around him, her smell, her touch, her warmth, and he wanted to die at that moment, for nothing could be more perfect than this._

* * *

"She didn't like it, OK?" he yelled to Ron, hushing him instantly.

The redhead stared at him for a second, mouth opened stupidly. Harry turned around. He had no use for scolding. He had his own inner judge already. But he didn't expect Ron to lay a hand on his shoulder.

"It's not the end of the world, mate."

"How isn't it?" he uttered, his mind repeating the words he thought too intimate to say to Ron: 'She gave herself to me… her first time…" There was a question, at the end, for he was aware of how short the actual thing had been. He had entered her once, did it count? But she had bled. He had made her bleed. He shook his head: 'and I couldn't make her come…' Though, at the same time, thinking of her copies' ministrations, he wondered how on Earth he could do more. 'She might be pregnant and hasn't even enjoyed it…'

She had told him it had been perfect. She had claimed to have planned a short first time, something about open wounds and not wanting to rub further the same night. But he had seen a single painful tear roll over her cheek just before she had managed to brush it, and no matter how much she insisted that pain had taken her by surprise, he couldn't but take the blame.

She had, however, insisted in keeping him inside of her. "There's more than one way of enjoying" she had whispered while holding him tightly, burying her nose in his neck –something she always did when hugging him, he wondered if she liked his smell-. "I love you" she had said then, and he had buried his own face in her neck as two lonely tears left his eyes, moved and ashamed that he had been so careless, so lacking. Wishing he had been intent, not in not making love to her –a kind gallant battle, but lost from the moment she had decided otherwise-, but in making it memorable. Asking Dobby for wine, roses… books…?

"First time?" Ron asked, startling him. He seemed to read what Harry wasn't willing to answer. In fact, Harry would rather ask 'How would you know?' but that would be to confirm it; on the other hand, it wasn't hard to guess, it had been Hermione after all. "It's rather usual, you know? Lav told me about this girl, she had a boyfriend who practiced some zen technique, lasted longer you see? Supposed it'd give her time to enjoy. Apparently, it was torture. Women" he shook his head in a 'who understands them' kind of way.

Wondering fleetingly if said girl had been Lavender herself, Harry still refused to answer.

"You can always make it up to her" Ron insisted. "Make it worth it…"

"There's no making it worth it, Ron!" Harry exclaimed softly. "It's teenage pregnancy. It might well be death. Nothing is worth it, ever."

"Don't be melodramatic, mate." Coming from Ron, it was saying something. "She's sixteen already! My grand-grandmother had three sons by the time…"

Harry simply turned around and left the room, the Fat Lady behind him yelling something about early hours.

It was useless. The entire castle was filled with memories of them. A corridor reminded him of Hermione bossing them around, the other lead to the library, and some places –sometimes unexplainably- reminded him of the Yule Ball, consequently of her when she had dressed up for the first time that he knew of, and she was so beautiful that he was left openmouthed and wondering.

When he got back to the common room, she was there, in flesh, a book in her hand, as usual. But she wasn't reading. Her gaze was lost in the firelight, her expression, softer than it usually was. Harry wondered if she was remembering, but couldn't fathom why she was smiling. He was, however, driven to her as to a force of nature. He wanted to crush her in his arms. He wanted to kiss her in front of everyone, and declare his love to her, preferably with Snape as a witness, so he would marry them already. 'Doesn't it sound too dramatic?' Hermione's voice scolded in his mind. It didn't mind. He couldn't control what he wanted, and wouldn't act upon it, not now, not with witnesses; he wouldn't endanger her further still, in case Voldemort was being informed. Yet, when he reached her, she lifted her bright eyes to his, and she knew. 'Tonight' it promised. 'Let me try again, tonight'.

* * *

*Author's note: copies are supposed to be like extra limbs, no personality, no feelings and, obviously, no equivalent in the real world, except for, well, actual limbs. They reflect a human being as a mirror would, but they are not human. So please do not take the chapter as an encouragement to try this at home.

* * *

**Preview**:

Hermione was curled up, quiet and still, a pale thin beauty under the moonlight. She was frowning, too; he discovered so when he parted the curtains and sat at the edge of the bed. She seemed like a girl that had grown up too quickly. Which she was. Harry felt as if he could watch her forever

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Please let me know what you think of this. You can review down there.


	6. Chose

Author's note: This chapter starts with chapter 21 of Half Blood Prince. I avoided quoting Rowling, I'm sure you can find the entire chapter easily enough ;) You might want to do so first, just to get a taste of her. I chose to respect part of the chapter because Harry's defense of Hermione was simply too tempting, and I found in lexicon that this scene fell exactly where I had left the fic, I figured it was pretty much a signal.

* * *

Hermiones praise to Kreacher had only one possible response from this one, considering; but the nasty elf's reaction made Harry see red, anyway. "Mudblood". Even if the boy wasn't thinking in so many words, the general feeling it gave him included a series of reflections: 'Would this be the treatment to her every time? Was stupidity this generalized in the Wizarding World? Were so few people able to see her for what she was? Though Hermione would be the only one to label Kreacher as 'people'. The thing would do well, indeed, by hearing her, and doing so all day long.'

As the wizard snapped at the creature, he was half sure Hermione would scold him back, later, for mistreatment of elves or something. She was too good for her own wellbeing.

Dobby disapparated a second later, leaving Harry much less enthusiast than he had expected several weeks ago. In fact he barely remembered having sent the elves in this quest. He turned to find Hermione mothering Ron, and he found himself more attuned to the topic of her being already such a good mom, than to that of Malfoys whereabouts. That didn't mean he didn't have questions, but there was also the wish to hear Hermiones answers, to work with her, to let her play Devil's advocate as much as she wanted to, because she liked it and it was probably the reason why he used to find the right answers, at the end.

Who would think a single awkward intoxicating night would make him that fluffy?

Who would think her otherwise entirely hermionish depart would leave him this disgruntled?

Harry laid awake for hours, afterwards. The boy was still unsure about the previous night, and tonight his (girlfriend?) had simply left. It wasn't as if he could sneak into the girls dorm, could he?

Couldn't he?

He did remember the incident with the stairs becoming slide the previous year, and he did not want an alarm waking up the whole Gryffindor house and letting the world know that he was sneaking into the girls' dorm; but as it turned out to be, the Founders' measure was as inocuous as easy to beat with some creativity. The boys his age had spent most of the current year sneaking into the girls' dorm and being caught less and less. A mixture of levitation and mapping of the area did the trick most of the time. Still few people had tried a broom, though trusting night talks, all of them had gotten lucky, sometimes in every sense of the expression.

And he did have an invisibility cloak.

Eventually he picked up said cloak and decided to give it a try, feeling much more uncomfortable than he used to when walking the castle past curfew.

He just needed to talk to her.

The girls dorm turned to be an exact mirror image of that of boys, stairs and all, but much more perfumed and adorned. Even under moonlight he could see and touch shadows of magical images stuck everywhere. He didn't know exactly where Hermione slept, but he went with his gut, and checked first the places that mirrored the ones where the boys of his own year slept. The intruder felt even worst as he forced his eyes to see past curtains and decipher who slept where; fortunately, nights were still cold enough that girls slept with lots of clothes on. There was Ginny, sleeping just the way her brother used to. Lavender snored gently, her long hair spilling out the edge of the bed. The boy identified his best friend so easily that he pondered why he had doubted he would. Hermione was curled up, quiet and still, a pale thin beauty under the moonlight. She was frowning, too; he discovered so when he parted the curtains and sat at the edge of the bed. She seemed like a girl that had grown up too quickly. Which she was. Harry felt as if he could watch her forever, but then, perceptive as always, she opened her eyes and saw him. There was no hesitation, no shrieking and no violent movement. Brown eyes met green ones and they just stayed like that until she stuck her hand under the pillow, extracted her wand and cast a muffliato around them.

"Sorry I woke you up" he apologized, "I just... I couldn't sleep... I..."

"... needed to come talk to me" she completed.

He blinked, wondering, as usual, how she could be so right, even when reading his mind. She must make an excellent legilimens.

"If you had any... _inappropriate_... intentions" she explained, blushing, "the door wouldn't have let you in. It's in 'Hogwarts, a history'. Honestly, Harry, if you just read it..."

"I don't like to be at odds with you" he spit.

A pause.

"Specially now" she completed.

Harry tried not to blush.

"I... don't know what to say..."

She just had to look into his eyes.

"I'm just scared, Harry" she confessed. "I know you feel very strongly about this Malfoy theory, and usually you follow your gut and it's right, but sometimes..."

Harry felt as if falling from the bed. She could as well have uttered the words: "last year". Sirius' death being fresh in his mind and heart, he needed no shadow of reminder. Especially from her. She had indeed tried to stop him, last year. If he had just listened...

The sorrow was slightly relieved by the surprise of having Hermione hugging him, even if uncomfortably, from across the bed.

"I'm sorry" she was saying now. "I'm so sorry... I'm just... It's scary, Harry. It's scary not to know where you are heading. I feel that you'll be safe with Dumbledore, but with Malfoy... in the best of cases you'll be wrong, and in the worst, you'll walk into a squad of Death Eaters... not that I think he's really one, but if he were... I'm not sure I can help... I'm just a student, you know?"

The witch smelled of pumpkin and treacle pie, and he folded his own arms around her carefully as he stuck his nose in her hair. Suddenly an image of last night engulfed him and he stiffened as he worked on fighting it back. This had happened at the oddest moments all day long. He had taken around three cold showers. It wasn't working anymore.

"Hermione..." he asked at last, blushing in advance. "What does happen if you get to think inappropriately when being already _inside_?"

Hermione's thin shape became quite pliant in his arms; her hug, less uncomfortable, less comforting, more seductive. A second later, she answered.

"The book wasnt that specific..."

It was intoxicatingly tempting, yet the idea of McGonagall storming here in response to an alarm that none of them could hear, and catching them -quite literally- with their pants down, scared him senseless, with the intensity only respect encouraged from childhood possessed.

"Let's do some research before" he suggested, dry-mouthed.

Hermione actually giggled. He didn't know she could do such a thing.

"Do you want us to go somewhere else?"

Want? _Want_?!

But then she stifled a yawn, and he realized that none of them had slept for a reason or the other the previous night. He suddenly realized the need of honeymoons: people needed to sleep at some point, if they were opting to spend the nights not-sleeping. Even while cursing in his mind, he offered the gentlest answer.

"Would something happen if I just lie here with you? I'm already here, anyway."

She smiled that perfect little smile she saved for him, and he knew he had done the right thing. Even while hating himself for it.

"I don't think some hours of sleep would do any harm" she conceded even as she pushed him to the bed, charming his shoes to leave his feet. "As long as we behave."

Harry might have found hard to fall asleep, but in truth, he had been awake for two days, and though this wasn't his bed and he used to sleep unaccompanied, Hermione's smell was familiar. Besides, once she spelled the bed to be much larger than it seemed, both of them were able to lie on their sides. It was comforting.

And just a little bit disappointing.

Anyway, he slept deeply enough that he didn't notice when they changed positions. He simply woke up to find himself lying prone with a weight over his back, from where a hair that wasn't his fell over his neck. It was warm and relaxing, and he found he liked to wake up like this. He lied completely immobile, until the voice came:

"Hermione, are you awake?"

Harry froze. Even knowing that near as they were, and under this amount of light, the girl outside shouldn't be able to distinguish two shapes, the boy couldn't see a way to escape this situation. They were lucky enough that the newcomer hadn't stumbled upon his shoes or the invisibility cloak lying silvery beside the bed. Anyway, if someone could find a way out, it was Hermione. She had moved just slightly, clinging to him further. Harry felt her shiver. She used to fear being expelled more than being killed, after all. The bright witch removed the isolating spell from the bed:

"Parvati?" she answered after a while, with voice a bit too sleepy to be credible.

Harry was barely able to distinguish a shadow against the moonlight, yet he saw it shift uncomfortably.

"I... Lavender..."

The twin seemed to fight for words for the longest time. Meanwhile, Hermione was breathing on his neck, and it was funny what it could do to a boy all of a sudden, after all those years of walking under the invisibility cloak together without giving such things a thought.

"AreyoudatingHarry?"

Hermione's breath stopped, then she sighed quietly before pointing out:

"You need to speak slower."

But she had understood all right. As Parvati explained herself, Hermione risked lifting a series of spells, muffliato being just one of them, before sitting on the bed.

"The curtain will retain the image it showed previously" she explained.

He was already missing her weight and smell. Parvati was just mentioning the Yule Ball in terms very different to those in his own memories. What she told sounded like a fairytale, sleeping beauties and all.

"What do you want me to answer?" his friend hurried him as he sat.

Her brown eyes were guarded. Harry didn't like it, at all.

"The chances of conception aren't doubled with two girls" she whispered quickly, avoiding his gaze, "but they are certainly increased. I might be sterile too, you know? In that case we would be losing time by trying... me, exclusively... If you want to... try her... I know it's a life and death situation. I'd be still... available..."

He couldn't believe what he was hearing. Images of having Parvati as he had had Hermione last night, came to his mind. It was surreal. The possibility of taking to bed two of the most beautiful girls of the school would be intoxicating to most boys in his dorm, but honestly, as he raised his gaze to that of Hermione's, and he tried to imagine this with someone else, he found he couldn't. Maybe Parvati would be desirable, experienced, and most definitely a bigger chance of getting rid of the horcrux, but she wasn't his accomplice. She couldn't understand. The image of Ron trying to extricate himself from Lavender's arms came to his mind.

"I'm most certainly not interested in dating her" he answered vehemently. "I can't do this with _anyone_ else, Hermione."

Her eyes got surprisingly wet, and he was under the impression that she wouldn't have stood that kind of situation, either. She was honest and faithful, she believed in moral and justice. Tricking Parvati into getting pregnant at sixteen of someone that wasn't even that caring about her, that was actually making love to someone else behind her back, was just... Not them.. That Hermione would even try to push her limits this far, for him, was mesmerizing. He was surprised and delighted to discover that, despite the circumstances, he wasn't willing to treat women as mares. He had doubted it, lately. The certainty of being decent still, was overpowering.

"Anyway" he phrased carefully, "remember you'd be telling Lavender's best friend that you are dating Voldemort's Undesirable Number One. That would reach the entire castle and the V-guy real fast. "

"I don't care..."

He had to kiss her, he just had. There had been this lovely challenge look in her face, as if she ate dark lords at breakfast. For him. What was a boy supposed to do? They fell on the mattress in a tangle of limbs just as Parvati called her for the third time, probably puzzled that Hermione was taking so long in answering. Her lips against his, Hermione lifted the spell and turned her head slightly.

"I don't know what to say, Parvati" she uttered breathlessly.

"Look" this one responded, sounding a bit pissed off, "I just want to know if he's available. I don't want to spend that kind of energy being jealous."

The reference to Lavender wasn't entirely veiled.

Harry's eyes on Hermione's remained pleading, worrying.

"He's my best friend" pink lips answered against his cheek. "There's no 'just' to it" she added truthfully.

"Are you dating or not?"

"I don't think you'd call it 'date'" Hermione stated, her eyes digging into his.

Harry smiled encouragingly. The silence stretched until Parvati's frustrated words resounded.

"Sorry that I woke you up."

She didn't sound the least bit sorry. Together, they heard her steps vanish. Hermione's expression was now thoughtful, as she made her bed soundproof again.

"If this doesn't work quickly enough" she phrased, her lips white as her eyes, once again, met his meaningfully, "you'll have to try someone else."

"If this doesn't work with you" he answered, "the problem would most likely lie within me. Why would I try someone else?"

But in truth, the idea of it being successful with Parvati... or anyone else, for that matter... and then being bonded to anyone but Hermione... Of, later, seeing her build her life around other guy -doing to that faceless prat what she had done to him the previous night- was just beyond endurable.

"Because it's the whole Wizarding World what is endangered" she argumented.

'Then we'll just have to try harder' Harry concluded, his eyes never leaving hers as he decended to taste her lips again.

How could he endure not kissing her during the day? She tasted so sweet and... Soft... Oh, what her lips did to him, as they went from the edge of his mouth and down his neck (for the first time?) He thrusted, answering a call thas wasn't rational.

And then, the shrill came. Socked green eyes found frantic brown ones, just before she searched for the source of the noise. Harry was already jumping out of the bed when Hermione grabbed his arm.

"It's within the spell" she screamed over the yells, poining to the head of the bed, where an ugly wooden accusatory face had appeared.

It took him too long to understand. Fortunately, the rest of the dorm was still. The muffliato prevented the alarm from reaching the rest of the girls. Thankfully. Harry couldn't fathom how Hermione could hear even her own thoughts.

"There must be another one to warn the professor" she reasoned. "Pick up your cloak" she reminded him. "Make sure you aren't visible."

"I can't leave you here!"

She pecked him on the lips, smiling.

"If their alarm went off" she explained, "they might already know it's my bed. There might also be an interval so professors won't be warned if students correct their behavior. Go now!"

The wizard smiled at her excessive reasoning, even at times like this. Kissing her quickly, he tried to leave the bed. She held him back. Under his inquisitive gaze, she pointed at the wooden face, that was turning blue. When it momentarily stopped yelling to gasp, Hermione pushed Harry past the wards, no sound left them with him. He threw the cloak over himself as he grasped the shoes and escaped the silent dorm, beaming.

* * *

Preview:

Opening his mouth, he was about to voice the absolute strangeness of being here, with her dressed like an aristocrat but sitting on stainless glass as they ate. Then he thought better of it and filled his mouth with his cupcake.

* * *

Short chapter, sorry. Rusty English, too.

Reviews down here, please.


	7. Snaky things and a pair of cupcakes

Long chapter, to partially compensate the long delay. Lemony, too. But happy as I am with your favs and follows, I really need you to review.

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**"Snaky things and a pair of cupcakes"**

"Miss Granger" Professor Snape chanted. "What a pleasure"

His tone suggested otherwise. And though she had been expecting him –there was no other reason for a Gryffindor to be right in front of his office after dinner–, the breaking of silence made her shiver violently, the chill reaching the tip of her toes. Yet, she turned bravely. Talking was an entirely different matter, though she managed:

"Professor. Can we speak privately?"

The pursing of his lips showed distaste, and it took so long for him to move that the answer would only be a no, yet she stood where she was until he stepped around her and let her into his office without another word. His almost entirely dark office, where he didn't lighten a single candle or magical fire. Even after the door was closed, the professor just scrutinized her, impossibly tall, arms crossed over his chest. He wouldn't make this, easier, would he?

"I don't have all day" he snapped, making her shiver all over again.

"I need to learn…"

"Biology should suffice"

Blushing furiously, Hermione amended:

"I need to learn Dark Arts"

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That morning:

"And then the cleaning lady goes down on her knees and…"

"Quit telling" Dean interrupted.

"What? Why?" Ron protested; he had been sitting on the edge of the bed nearby, elbows on his knees, hanging from Seamus' every word from the start.

"You won't learn a thing from porn, Ron" Dean explained as he stood, trying his new shoes. "Those movies are about the worst possible way to learn how to pleasure anyone"

Harry, who had been pretending not to hear –though he was half certain that Ron had pursued the chitchat partly on his behalf–, now turned fully to the Half-Blood Prince's manual. He was already dressed, for it was cupcake day –a once-a-week occasion, and the breakfast everyone arrived early to, for cupcakes were uncharacteristically limited in number–, yet he had stayed in bed, a leg hanging from the edge. Browsing. It would seem that some inscriptions appeared and disappeared as they wished. Or maybe he was just too sleep-deprived.

"If the girl likes you and trusts you" Dean said, "she'll be turned on with the simplest kiss. If she doesn't, every long-thought strategy –and specially those gathered from porn– will fail. The way to her climax, you'll find only by exploring and asking her."

No boy would admit that he had problems in that area, so Dean reached the stairs with no further interruption. All gazes turned to Seamus, who raised both hands as he stood.

"I won't miss the cupcakes for drooling over a movie I already watched. Sorry."

As he left, Ron muttered a "traitor" and half-sank in his trunk, trying to find his one clean tunic while making a new mess that would no doubt contribute to the loss of some other of his belongings over the next days.

"Ron" he called, and the redhead muttered something indistinct that meant that he was listening. "What's a 'sweet-love snake'"

The door opened then and Harry turned to the incomer, failing to see the expression in Ron's face, that had just appeared over the trunk –mouth open, furious blush–. The book only showed that term linked by an arrow to a potion ingredient beside a cryptic note: "for women's pleasure".

"Now we're speaking" Seamus smiled, coming to pat Harry on the shoulder, which was all the more uncomfortable because Harry didn't really know what they were speaking about.

He crossed gazes with Ron, that was opening and closing his mouth like a fish. Opting for the honest approach, Harry confessed:

"I really don't know what it is"

"Well, they you'll have to try it, don't you?"

"Is it that easy to get?"

"Contraband exists everywhere" Seamus whispered conspiratorially.

"Does it hurt?"

It got him a chuckle. Patting his shoulder again, Seamus left the room with a wink.

"So… what was that?" his gaze was redirected towards his mate.

This one was slightly redder, still incapable of coherent speech. Finally he hid in his trunk. Harry struggled to get the words that came dulled by wood and distance. Not that he succeeded much, just enough to gather that those were used during intercourse. And that no, it didn't hurt. Harry's own blush was attributable more to the reaction of his friends than to a personal judgement.

But as he stepped downstairs to find Hermione lying on the sofa, as he crossed gazes with her chocolate eyes, he couldn't but wonder.

"Let's go" she said, spelling the book to return to her room as she grasped the basket just now Harry noticed was sitting beside her.

"It's cupcake day" he managed to mutter, suddenly nervous.

Her gaze on him was that of when he wanted to skip a lesson, but he was already deciding this wasn't a lesson he wanted to skip. Then she opened the basket to show the cupcakes inside, and it was more than settled. Not that she waited for his permission to grasp his hand and lead him through the door.

"Frankly, Harry…" she was saying, with a hermionish sigh.

The wizard let her guide him, smelling her treacle-like essence and wondering how had he gotten so lucky, as, at the same time, he worried over what he was to do when they arrived. Last night had been easy and spontaneous, though they hadn't done much more than sleeping the rest would have come easily enough. But that damn bed…

"Last night…"

"No professor came" she completed, masking her relief; she was still pretty much the girl whose boggart was a professor telling her she had failed.

"Don't you have class?"

"I'm skipping it"

The wizards stopped, making her turn.

"No, you aren't"

The possibility of her dropping school even before she got pregnant was simply not acceptable. For both of their sakes, he genuinely hoped she wouldn't get that way until seventh year: then she'd have nine months to complete school. And he'd have time to think this over.

"Yes, I am"

"Who are you and where is Hermione?"

Rolling her eyes, she started stretching how important this was, and Harry got the distinct feeling that she was rationalizing. She must be as displeased with skipping lessons as she had ever been, just masking it for his sake. It was moving and wrong.

"We can do this tonight"

"No, we can't. You have to see to Slughorn"

Starting to feel a headache –and he never had any of those– the boy planted his feet firmly on the ground and insisted:

"You have convinced me of the need of doing this, but I'm not seeing you skip classes."

"Harry…"

"You know the male has to be a willing participant, right? So don't skip class just trying to convince me."

She was pursing her lips in that very characteristic way of hers, then she nodded.

"OK, let's make this quick" and went ahead.

He followed her dizzily, wondering how on earth was he supposed to please her enough without experience nor time.

"Given the circumstances, you don't have to pay attention to me" she was saying, seemingly reading his thoughts –not that she couldn't–. "It increases chances just slightly."

"It does?" he asked wearily.

They had already reached the Room of Requirement, where the door was, surprisingly enough, waiting for them. Hermione hesitated a second before opening it. He came in a moment later, to see something he had never seen: the room, in the process of changing. It was entirely too confusing, so he looked from the normal bed that had just turned into a gynecological one, to the girl, now in a white ancient dress that covered her completely.

"I'm a bit nervous" she confessed in answer. "The room doesn't know exactly what I need".

The metallic thing had stayed, and the dress had stayed. It had a high neck and extended to her feet, seeming at first sight so very decent it was kinky. It also had an opening near her groin. Harry found himself staring at her, making out her forms through fabric that was fairly transparent, as she avoided his gaze, blushing. Clearing his throat, he blushed in turn.

How on earth were they to make this work?

The room was more than the bed, though. Besides of the mirror-like surface of the metal, there were real mirrors all around, and the only illumination came from a circle of magical fire levitating around the metallic horror; beyond the mirrors, nothing was visible. There were also strange devices all around, even over the bed. The wizard would be scared, but being this room what it was, there were slight chances of it attacking them. No other place in the castle was programmed for the needs of its occupants.

A slight rustle, and Hermione appeared in his champ of vision, climbing the cold table in her oh-so-innocent clothes. They made her seem a wizarding princess, and Harry knew his clothes had changed too, to fit hers. The fire half-revealed the intricate ornaments on the fabric.

"Come" she spoke, hand extending towards him.

The word echoed with its second meaning and Harry suddenly realized he was about to get laid, with Hermione no less, with entire permission to slid again and again into her slight channel and finish inside of her, and he was instantly ready –and slightly ashamed of that–. He obliged, stepping an inch from her knees. Hesitantly –oh-so-hesitantly– she opened them for him. What it did to his blood, previously so quiet, was wicked.

They locked eyes –the firelight did something funny to her eyes, it turned them into liquid chocolate.

And speaking of chocolate…

What did that cupcake do in her hand?

"You'll need strength" she said, handing it over.

Harry grasped it as she summoned another one. Opening his mouth, he was about to voice the absolute strangeness of being here, with her dressed like an aristocrat but sitting on stainless glass as they ate. Then he thought better of it and filled his mouth with his cupcake.

She was much messier with hers.

As she bit into it, teeth sinking in the butter cream, he found himself swallowing what wasn't entirely chewed and her eyes darted to his, the fire taking golden reflexes from her eyes, as her lips, chocolate-stained and shining with grease, let through the tip of her tongue. He licked his own lips reflexively, and half the mirrors in the room showed the same, incredibly hot image.

Merlin, how much tighter could his pants get?

Without realizing it fully, he had put his hands on her knees, whose heath he could feel through the fabric. She responded by opening them further, which made his manhood twitch. It didn't know nor care how much experience he had.

Chocolate-stained fingers came to caress his lower lip, startling him slightly, for he had been watching her own mouth so intently that he had lost track of the majority of her body –except for strategical parts, that is–, and she leaned forth to brush her lips with his. It was barely a kiss, no pressure at all, yet it sent fire through his entire system. The wizard would have wondered if the room was conspiring or something, but in truth, he wasn't nearly in his right mind. She had turned her head slightly so their lips would fit, and had just licked his lips, testing, and suddenly Harry was positively devouring her lips, until she moaned. 'Too much?' he wondered, half withdrawing as his scared eyes darted to hers, whose expression made something boil behind his breastbone.

His hands grasped the fabric of her dress over her thighs. Even through the gender he could almost feel the texture of her skin. Her arms had hesitantly encircled him, and were now grasping his own vest at the back. Sweet, soft tongue danced along with his, and a soft, perfumed sigh escaped her lips, turning the beast in his chest into something frantic and uncontrollable. The hands on her tights pressed against them drawing possessive circles as the fabric inched up.

"Do you like this?" she asked breathlessly –pupils positively enlarged.

He chuckled darkly.

Then she escaped his lips. 'No, no' he thought, suddenly uncertain and aching all over; but then she was nibbling at his neck, teeth involved without biting, and the awe was back, tenfold multiplied. All he could do, was to press her head to the sensitive place as he watched absently their mingled image from a half dozen points of views. His other hand was moving back to cup her bum, sliding the fabric of the skirt with the pressure, though he was half certain she'd take the intrusive appendix to a safer place.

She moaned, instead.

It was the faintest of sounds, so very in character with the clothes she was wearing that it didn't seem faint at all. The room seemed to echo, and Harry thrusted between her legs, feeling the chill as he made contact with the steel, as a part of his brain wondered how to get all those clothes off them in the next five milliseconds. Then he was ashamed. Then he felt smug. It was altogether confusing.

"… like it?" she asked again, a mewling, little sound that ran down his back.

So asking was allowed?

He nodded against her skin, the movement carrying his lips near her own neck. A beat, then he sank in the soft warm perfumed hollow between her neck and shoulder. Though missing her lips on his own skin, he found it had been a rather good business, with the frantic beating of her heart –"beating for me" he remembered dizzily. Her gasp didn't alarm him that much this time.

"… like it?" he asked in turn, an uncharacteristic smirk on his lips.

Her quivery nod was his answer.

Not that he needed further encouragement. She tasted like treacle tart and chocolate, with some pumpkin in the mix. And she tasted like it everywhere: neck, shoulder, down to her cleavage… Taste, taste, was the mantra. He wasn't experienced, but he was hungry, oh so hungry of her flesh. The hand under her nape supported her as he watched her breasts, clad by the garment that didn't conceal their shape.

She had felt his eyes on her even if she couldn't see him in the mirrors. Her neck still tingled where his lips had been, and a soft breeze made her feel wet coldness on the path he had led. Yet, nothing felt like his eyes on her breasts. It was so intense it was almost physical, magic must be involved, reaching for her skin even before he did. Blood rose to her cheeks. The fabric did nothing to hid the hardness of her nipples. Now that he could read through those signs –she herself had shown him–, she found herself more exposed than if naked.

His mouth on the breast made her shiver. He had sucked in as much of it as his mouth would take, with an awkward boldness that went straight to her knickers. Closing her eyes, she let her hands tangle in his hair for a second, then turned shy and took them away, as he let the breast slid out. Then he sucked the tip, hungrily, half painfully, making her whimper with a mixture of dread and awe. He was a fast learner. How much had he learned from watching her magic take care of such things, she wouldn't say, but he was indeed more skilled than she expected him to be.

"… like it?" he asked, far less sure than he seemed.

She closed her knees around his hips, drawing him closer, and he shivered with a rush of fierce joy very alike to what he had felt on his first time on a broom. His mouth went to the other breast on impulse, as the other hand came from her arsecheek to the wet first breast. He sucked franticly, unavertedly tearing the delicate cloth to reveal the soft tissue of her actual nudity. Her nipple protruded obscenely from the fabric. He thrusted, a steady lingering pressure against her sex, as he watched it. Wine-colored. Though under firelight he couldn't really be sure of anything. Her heavy, panting breath made him stare at her blushing cheeks, closed eyes. She looked so innocent… Her hands were tangled in the front of the fabric that covered her stomach, and with another rush he knew she was lost to these sensations, that they were relatively new to her despite the skill she had showed two nights ago. Without stopping staring at her face, he went down to tease that nipple with his lips, then with his teeth, until she squirmed and not even with the stamina of lovemaking he was able to support all of her upper body in one arm, so he let her head gently on the metallic bed she herself had conjured and advanced, tasting, towards her navel.

Suddenly, she grasped his hand and took it to her clad thigh, and pushed it slightly up. Puzzled –if very aroused– green eyes went from hers –lost–, to the hand, to the thigh and what awaited up there. Trembling, he caressed upwards slowly, slowly –sliding the fabric with his hand, which made her shiver–, until both thighs met. The strategically placed hollow was there, letting him see a piece of her most intimate flesh, and suddenly he did want to taste her there, but didn't dare. Instead, he watched her face closely –though the position hid her expression fairly well– as he slid a finger through her folds –oh, so wet…–, the tip moving up and down her shaft, exploring. There was a button at the beginning, she gasped when he touched it, so he did so again, and again.

And then she was lifting her legs to the stirrups.

His eyes went to her face, but she had her eyes closed, if her hands were caressing her own abdomen.

"Like it" she gasped in confirmation.

Just then he realized his finger was still on her button, and sank deeper in the cream to caress it, and back, following the shaft, each time bolder, until the pressure was enough that his first phalange slid in a channel that didn't seem to have a bottom. He explored further, watching his friend closely for unfavorable reactions, but then he felt the pressure around his fingers and growled softly as she thrust slightly.

"Please" she gasped.

Shivering, he undid his pants, his manhood at just the right place to slid into her channel. As he got to the entrance, she shivered.

"That's good" she reassured him with breathy voice.

So he slid in, and gasped. She was so very tight, so very... virgin… He had been fully inside just once, so she hadn't still adapted to his width, and as he pushed inside, he knew she was in pain, even if she didn't complain. A single drop of sweat rolled down his temple as he tried to be still, while caressing the button, to distract her.

"Does it help" he asked quietly through clenched teeth.

When his manhood inside felt the pressure of her internal muscles, everything turned red.

"Yes" she sighed.

He tried to go on but it was her who moved down to get him fully inside, making him growl softly and brace on the bed, just for a sec. Then he slid out and in in quick succession, everything in him shivering and screaming for a pick-up in pace. She tensed, though didn't move and didn't protest. Nearly cursing, he forced himself to stop mid-movement.

"It hurts"

"Unavoidable" she sighed through clenched teeth. "Don't stop"

So he slid infinitesimally in, a millimetric movement that only fueled his need, as a part of him wondered how to help and the other one –the one that was wildly enjoying, and didn't really care– growled for him to properly thrust for once.

The vial appeared out of nowhere, amber-colored, turning and reflecting the light in a way that reminded him of her eyes. Every mirror in the room multiplied it. Wizard and witch locked gazes as the recipient turned to let the liquid drop slowly on her exposed nipple, the oil inside sliding over her skin and under her clothes as if it had a life of its own. If seen from a close range, it showed individual short threads. Just like small snakes slithering over her naked body.

The first sensation was the coldness. Hermione wouldn't have expected it from an oil-based potion, but once she experienced it, she knew what it was and why the room had brought it for her. Not that she approved. Depending on spells and potion ingredients wasn't good for the thing they might just be building. It was, however, extremely good on the short term, assuring their goal, and she couldn't find it in herself to protest when the sensation turned to electric, extending to the tip of her fingers, as if her nipple was being well and thoroughly sucked. The little "snakes" were slithering along her skin, the contact cold and uncharacteristically hairy, caressing. One of them had reached her other breast, so the sensation duplicated, a third one was playing on her navel and she felt several sliding down, down, their movement extending the oil that kept them "alive". Focusing in the male towering over her, she tensed, not in pain or fear, but in expectation. He had commanded the snakes, knowingly or not. The reflection of fire in his glasses –the fires now so high that there was no mistaking them for candles– didn't let her met his eyes, so she found she didn't quite recognize him in a visceral level. Who was the Harry who could do this to her?

Then her eyes turned white as her mouth drew a prefect "Oh".

He couldn't stop himself from thrusting. She was such an erotic view, in her long dress, a single breast exposed, as she curved her back and her arms went up to grasp the edge of the bed. And she didn't tense. At all. Her thick, wet channel welcomed him with soft encouraging contractions that felt like home. Looking straight at their joining sexes, his manhood sliding in and out of her flesh with soft obscene wet sounds, he growled and closed his eyes, suddenly feeling he was too near, too soon.

Had he looked closer, he had seen several small snakes biting her clit to join physical and magical nerves. She couldn't see, yet she felt them, and knowing how this acted she opened her eyes wide, waiting for the high that would inevitably follow. It started as other snakes slid into her with his manhood, clinging instantly to the most sensitive spot inside. Others went further still. It was slightly uncomfortable as they penetrated her arse; unlike during other physiological functions, this tingled and the sensation was slightly too much, even though they didn't force the channel open, as a finger would, for example.

And now she was daydreaming. Merlin…

The simultaneous stimulus of both nipples, the navel and several parts of her perineum, and a million more anonymous other places of her anatomy where the little snakes were slithering, combined with the coldness of the steel behind her back and the looming man, seemed to be changing something fundamental in her. All the time, he was sliding inside, relieving part of the tension the snakes built, in a sort of upwards spiral. She felt lost, though she was fairly certain she wouldn't climax this time neither. It was all too new, and different from daydreams and fantasies in its very reality. And she was scared. So scared.

"Harry… Oh, Harry" she spluttered, muscles clenching around his manhood as she shivered.

He had already grown jerky, and that was his undoing. He sank into her for the last time, trembling violently, waves of his seed seeking her warmth, wondering if earth would ever get solid again.

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He smiled to her hesitantly as she lowered her gaze, blushing. She had asked if he had minded the settings; he had wondered the reason for the bed. Now knowing that in the medical field it was a common sex fantasy, Harry was trying to build his mind around the fact that Hermione did have of those -and he was allowed to know them.

They had just come out of the Room of Requirements, having missed breakfast and not missing it a bit.

None of them saw the professor as she slid from the intermingling corridor into their paths.

Harry was the first one to stop, his hand grasping Hermione's forearm so she wouldn't collapse with her favorite professor. The girl's gaze went from the floor –where it had been- to the hand, to his eyes, to the place they were directed at. It was good she had already been blushing, or it had been too obvious now.

"Good morning, Miss Granger" Professor McGonagall said, too-wise eyes sliding from her to her friend. "Good morning, Mr Potter."

As they greeted in turn, the professor looked behind them warily, lips pale and forming a thin line.

"I didn't see any of you in breakfast"

Harry hid the basket behind his back, perhaps too obviously.

"I intended to have a word with you, Miss Granger. If you please."

"I'm running late for Ancient Runes" Hermione spluttered.

"It won't take long"

When the professor turned to lead the way, Harry was still grasping her forearm, tighter than before. Never like then he had feared his Head of House. With no time nor privacy to plan, they just stared at each other, scared and weary, their mouths open, but not daring to say anything. Hermione still felt his seed between her legs. "Merlin, please, don't let her take me to Pomfrey" she plead, though in truth the chances weren't significant. You had to have more than a suspicion to drag a student to the infirmary. At the end she nodded and he swallowed and let her go, watching until they turned and disappeared.

As Hermione walked behind the professor, too many fleeting ideas came to her mind. Some of them, hilarious. She really didn't want to go. Obviously, the alarm of the previous night had warned the professor, and this one probably knew whose bed had rung, though since beds weren't assigned, she might be just fishing for information. It was, of course, possible the professor knew even who was her accomplice. She couldn't let McGonagall know about horcruxes, if Dumbledore hadn't –though it was incredibly tempting, both for having someone to speak to, someone who would understand, and for having help among the professors–.

'Just keep your mouth shut' she decided. If McGonagall went full Scotland Yard in interrogation techniques, she didn't have a chance. Inappropriate behavior was grounds for expulsion. However, she suspected the professor wouldn't be that harsh on a student, and she knew that, favoritism being unprofessional, she still was her favorite.

"Come in, please" McGonagall invited.

The student tried to look as nonchalant as she could, though she truly didn't have a gift for lying. She sat on the edge of the chair, then realized it would look like exactly what it was: being on edge, and sat properly. When the teacup reached her side of the desk, she smiled and thanked, but kept her hands where the clatter of fine porcelain wouldn't give her trembling away.

"How are things going?" the professor asked, sitting on the other side of the desk.

"Perfectly" Hermione herself said, a bit too soon, wondering how an innocent Hermione would look and trying to channel her.

McGonagall just looked into her eyes, for the longest time. Hermione hoped she wasn't a legilimens as well.

"Something you must tell me?" she insisted.

The girl shook her head, faking a clueless expression.

The professor tightened her lips.

"Let me be honest with you, Miss Granger. A very specific alarm rang from the Gryffindor girl's dorm. I wanted to know your thoughts on the subject"

There it was. Her chance for redemption. If she confessed now, McGonagall would understand. Hell, she'd probably dismiss Snape and give her a medal, help her find another way to save Harry, something.

So Hermione said:

"I don't understand, professor. What do you mean 'specific'?"

McGonagall looked as if she had been slapped and couldn't believe it. As if betrayed. Fighting back the guilt, Hermione saw the professor approach, sit on the edge of the desk, closer but still not menacing.

"I think you know what I mean" eyes glinted with wisdom. "Why would a girl as promising as yourself throw away her chances for a boy?"

It was more or less what everyone would ask in a few months' time… if things went well. It hit home.

"Is it Mr Potter?" Hermione shivered, hands struggling not to fidget in her lap, trying not to avoid her gaze and still not to show too much. "How long have you been with him? How far have you gotten?"

Her mouth tasted rotten as Hermione repeated.

"I don't know what you mean"

"You do" the woman's words resounded, sure and final.

Silence followed, and hard as she tried, Hermione had to look away. There were still several moments until the oldest witch added.

"I believe you know by now how much I… we all… favor you, Miss Granger. You and Potter. Sure as you must be that we aren't but old fools trying to keep you from pleasures…"

"No, professor!" Hermione exclaimed, not realizing she had interrupted. "We know you only try to protect us. We do. We trust you… you all…"

"Then why…?"

That was the saddest expression Hermione remembered having seen in her favorite professor. Ever. Never as then she had been tempted to speak, to confess. But she couldn't. So it was only her eyes that plead for understanding, for forgiving, as her mouth, half open, let nothing out.

"I must protect you even from yourself" McGonagall said eventually, regretfully. "I must also protect the school; it cannot take responsibility for the virtue or pregnancy of one of its students. You have made me incredibly proud. Please, don't shame me in equal measure"

They were at an impasse, and McGonagall must let her go before Ancient Runes. 'Just a minute more' the girl thought to herself, 'hold on just a minute more'. The professor's eyes were as close to a plead as they'd ever get, she knew. She was disappointing her. Hermione was all about not disappointing professors. And all the time, there was her favorite professor, that was as close to the witch version of a mother she'd ever had, wise eyes darting from one of hers to the other.

But eventually, she was dismissed.

She managed to walk several dozen meters before hiding behind a tapestry, supporting her back on the wall and trying to calm down. The girl in her, the good student, the know-it-all, wanted to cry. Hard. How was she supposed to endure this, if she couldn't even be scolded by McGonagall?

And she didn't even have time for this. She still had to grab her books from the dorm before class. She'd just have to swallow her tears. If things went well, she'd have too much time to skip lessons after this.

Mad ideas darted through her mind: from dropping Hogwarts before bringing shame on the school she loved –but she couldn't drop her education for no reason, there was no proof she'd be pregnant before next year or give birth before finishing seventh year–, to confessing everything.

There was no way she could concentrate in anything ancient, certainly not in runes, so she spent the entire lesson, eyes void –to the professor's intense puzzlement-, thinking. Something was clear: if she was sacrificing so much, she might as well increase her chances of saving Harry. In more ways than one.

Even if it meant asking Snape for extra lessons.

There was no way he'd be harder to endure than professor's McGonagall's disappointment had been.

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**Preview**:

"I want to be there for you, Hermione. I was your friend before… before everything… And you have no one else that would understand, so… Please… Please let me help. Think of me as a girlfriend if you must."

That made her laugh, a sort of bark in the silence of the bathroom.

"What do you need?" he asked quietly. "No questions asked"

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Was it too weird? Too kinky? Too awkward? Is Hermine too forward? Is Dark Magic something you like to see treated or am I diverging?

Please do let me know.

Like Dean said (and applies to more than sex) no way to please someone if that someone wouldn't tell you what feels good.

**Reviews** down here.


	8. Unexpected complication and a cup of tea

Author's note: This is a rather medical chapter. Being a doctor, I've come across all these cases on one point or another (minus the magic, of course), and some of these things have happened to me. You might find them useful. I just hope you find them interesting as well. I'll have to touch pretty sensitive subjects, please if you can't endure it just skip, I don't mean to start a discussion. It's quite obviously not in my best interest to lose readers, if I didn't feel it needs to be a part of the plot I wouldn't be writing it so. Don't kill the messenger, I'm sticking to medical facts here.

I owe the beginning of this chapter to the wonderful reviewer who pointed out what our favorite couple was missing. She's totally right and Hermione simply has too much on her head to pay attention right now, but please know I'm moving in that direction. The reviewer is not accountable for anything else. So thank you, nerdmom. I hope you don't hate the chapter.

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Unexpected complications and a cup of tea

The couch moved beside her as Ron sat. Hermione flinched, suddenly forced to acknowledge the word outside her body –the loud common room, the people reacting normally and laughing and studying as she…

"You have to be more foreword" the redhead put bluntly.

"Excuse me?"

There was an edge to her voice he really should have heard.

"In bed. Harry isn't saying a thing, but I see he's seriously distressed and the rare questions he dares ask …"

"Ronald Weasley!" she interrupted as she stood, whispering despite having already cast the muffliato, least someone else heard.

The whisper, unless the spell, wasn't for keeping it private. She was just so filled with rage she could hardly breath. Closing her eyes, she regained enough self-control to communicate.

"I seriously doubt you should be giving us pillow advices, Ronald"

"It's not as if I didn't know!"

At which point she started walking away.

This, on top of everything! She could hardly count her problems anymore.

For one, there were professors breathing on her neck. McGonagall and Snape, both expecting opposite things from her. Yet, she couldn't explain to McGonagall, and Snape wouldn't help her even in the academic field. Her insistence in learning whatever she could that would help Harry –namely, Dark Magic- had faced the professor's firm rejection and, she feared, even his despise.

_"No" he had said that first day, staring at her from his height, arms crossed over his chest._

_"For the tenth time, Miss Granger. No" he had whispered the following morning, not even looking at her, but at the potion that lightened the room in green._

_"I am not to have you at my door every free period, Miss Granger" he had said immediately after opening his door and before closing it with a bang, not even allowing her the time to open her mouth._

_"Am I to put you under Imperious, Miss Granger?" he had asked after class as she approached, the rest of the students having left in a hurry as usual. "Just do what must be done". She had fixed her gaze on his hands as they sank into the cat's insides, extracting a wet cub that panted painfully, the lungs insufficiently developed to endure without the mom, glassy eyes staring at her. It was to be a very, very painful death, and Hermione suddenly feared Snape would indeed put her under Imperious and make her do that to another kitty. For the first time, she didn't insist, she had to throw up and she sure couldn't do that in front of the professor._

_Now she didn't even want to go there again._

_Yet, she must. For Harry's sake._

Unfortunately, Ron ended up catching up with her. His legs were longer. The only positive aspect was that the muffliato spell moved with them. Hermione groaned loudly as he started talking again.

"He's my friend, and this is messing him up."

She was trying so hard to not listen, she didn't even notice taking the stairs.

"Reckon he feels guilty about all the deal, but perhaps if he managed to, you know, make you enjoy…"

"I really don't have time for it, Ron!" she screamed, shutting the door closed.

"That's my room" he screamed from outside.

So she breathed three times, looking around to verify that in fact, and to her horror, she had escaped to the very place he could in all right claim as his, then she opened the door and stormed past Ron and into the Common Room. People there gaped at her, rarely having seen such a nasty fight, even between them. Harry tried to grasp her hand, but she avoided him and went straight to the girls' bathroom, where she took off her panties and sat on a toilet –again-, both hands covering her face.

"What have I done"

She knew her screaming hadn't improved her situation. Now she'd have to leave here with exactly the same problems, plus having to face lots of Gryffindors interrogative or judgmental faces. Honestly… It wasn't supposed to be this hard. The perspective of a teen pregnancy, she had forcefully accepted. Why did this have to add to the burden?

And she had her own problems to take care of.

Another blush came over her as she looked back to the needy way in which she had slipped into Harry's bedroom before dawn. (She hadn't even thought of the possibility of an alarm being set around the boys' beds, which was quite absurd of her.) Leaning over him, she had kissed the sleeping boy's neck as she tried to build the confidence to touch him intimately. He hadn't minded. Of course not. Slipping easily from dreaming about her to having her, he hadn't even flinched. It was her who had flinched when he had started levitating –natural magic-, enough for them both to lose touch with the mattress, not enough for it to be a problem. They had laughed together at that point, at the feeling of being weightless, at the sheer freedom of it. Getting rid of his pants and boxers in a fluid though sleepy motion, and not having her panties on at all –she had come here with a specific purpose-, she had impaled herself without preamble, groaning as he did. It was still a bit painful, a bit sore, but it was nothing beside the relief it brought. She hadn't gone off the cliff, though. He had tried, she must concede him that. It had been dawn when he had left his instincts take control. His groans had filled her with a different sort of satisfaction. All in all, it had been pretty amazing, and she now found a smile in her face.

Yet, she felt as if she was using him now, and the mere idea turned the smile into a grimace.

There was a burning inside of her, in her pelvis. It had started rather suddenly, and she was as scared as mortified. She looked around, at Lavender, at Parvati, wondering if other sexually active girls were as affected as she was, if she was just making a fuss. If it was all in her mind. If it was some psychosomatic result of the clashing of her rather conservative education with her brand new behavior. If she was turning into a nymphomaniac. If she really had a vaginal infection, though she was positive Harry had been as much a virgin as she was, so how had she gotten it? Moniliasis was a possibility, too. It wasn't sexually transmitted… exactly.

She wondered if magic was implied. If the creatures Harry had used on her in the Room of Requirement had stayed inside of her, of if part of their magic remained. If it was the exchange of magic that happened every time wizard and witch had sex, a phenomenon she had read about –it could be used to confer more pleasure and transcendence to the union-, but never experienced firsthand, that she knew of.

She couldn't concentrate in anything. Not in class, not in textbooks, not even in novels. She craved the feeling of Harry filling her. In fact, anyone would do. It was like an itch. She hated it and felt ashamed of it and hated herself, and she didn't see what she could do about it. She spent as much time in the bathroom as she could, because fresh water and air helped, just a little bit.

The rational part of her brain insisted that she just needed some antibiotics and she'd be all good to go. Staring at the bloody content of the toilet –she had just started pissing blood, as red bits of sand in her urine- she was rather positive that she only had a nasty bladder infection. She knew that happened a lot when you had sex, because bacteria near the urethra was transported to it through all the movement. That there was a honeymoon variant of it.

Still, the uncertainty, the disgust and the shame wouldn't go away. She was utterly scared. Because she was more than brain and she was discovering so much about her body these days, a part of her nagged her about the other possibilities. What if antibiotics didn't solve it?

What was wrong with her?

She wanted it to just go away.

She didn't know if it was better to stay in the bathroom or if the continuous passing of acid fluid would just burn her urethra. All she knew about how to treat such a thing, was that she'd have all the antibiotics she needed –at least, to confirm or deny the diagnosis, through and empiric treatment- at home, but here, she had no access to them. She couldn't write to her mom without worrying her. She had to check if such antibiotics would harm the embryo possibly growing inside of her, and she had no books involving muggle medicine, nor were they in the library.

She couldn't study like this. Forget seventh year and the baby-caring, she wouldn't get past the next exam if this went on.

Someone knocked at the door, making her flinch. Of course that would happen. Groaning for herself, she braced herself for the worsening of the burn, then stood and dressed before flushing and opening the door…

To no one.

She was about to shut herself in again, but the door contacted something and wouldn't close.

"Hermione"

She jumped.

"You really shouldn't be here, Harry" she scolded.

The bossy tone was so worn out that there was a silence afterwards, as both of them acknowledged that there was something very, very wrong.

"What's happening?" he asked simply. "Are you already…?"

"No! No."

The silence settled again, as a cloud of dust, sticking to their skins.

She wondered if she had been that obvious to the rest of the Common Room. She hoped not. She hoped he was just over aware of her.

"I want to be there for you, Hermione. Not as a knight in shining armor" he cried afterwards, her protest showing in her face, "but… you know… I was your friend before… before everything… And you have no one else that would understand, so… Please… Please let me help. Think of me as a girlfriend if you must."

That made her laugh, a sort of bark in the silence of the bathroom.

"What do you need?" he asked quietly. "No questions asked"

She thought fast.

"I need access to the infirmary, and then, maybe, to the medical part of the library. We might have to go back to the infirmary afterwards."

"Well, what are invisibility cloaks for?" he asked cheerfully, and then: "Now?"

She totally loved him, right then and there.

"The risk…"

"Worth taking"

He opened the cloak, just lightly, letting her in. She stood facing him, under the cloak, green quiet eyes shining, and she thought that if she was the only one suffering from it, at least she was lucky enough that she had a bit of help. She didn't kiss him, nor he she, but there was something passing between them that was a bit deeper than that.

"I really love you" she whispered.

"I do know that" he whispered back, and that was it.

As they went through the common room, avoiding classmates, he asked warily:

"Are we recruiting Ron?"

"I owe him an apology" she sighed after a moment.

"I'm not sure what all that was about, but I'd say he'll be useful"

So they approached the redhead, who had come down again and was currently looking most upset, and Harry whispered in his ear that they must steal something from the infirmary, and if he was up to it. Ron stood quietly, stretching as if he was going for a walk, then walked before them and left the portrait open.

"I'm sorry" she said when he joined them under the cloak. "And thank you"

"That must be a first" he joked back, blue eyes totally understanding.

She had rarely felt so lost yet so protected. With Harry and Ron by her side, even though her pain put her in hell, she felt as if she wanted to cry with relief.

"Let's see" Harry planned. "The infirmary. Where exactly do you need to be?"

"The medicine cabinet" she whispered.

"The one in plain sight" he clarified, his expression showing how disturbing the news were.

"I'm sorry. We might go back at night"

"No" he replied. "I just hope there is no patient in the infirmary and no protecting spell in the cabinet"

His voice sounded dull, as if he truly had no hope.

"Hey, if they left a Cerberus behind a simple Alohomora, there's a bit of a chance, right?" was Ron's cheerful remark.

It seemed as if his optimism wasn't that far off. When, after making sure there were no professors around, Harry left the cloak to enter the infirmary, there were indeed no patients there.

"We're lucky" he conveyed to his friends. "Hurry, it's empty"

"I'll be out here" Ron offered. "You'll need me to warn you if someone's coming"

Harry would object, but if someone was to be there for Hermione, he figured it must be him. So they changed places under the cloak and that was it.

"What are we looking for?" he asked as Hermione tried to break the spells around the cabinet.

"Some kind of antibiotic" she said.

"Do you have any idea of how it looks?"

She didn't answer.

She truly had no idea of how to identify a treatment for what she had. Obviously, she didn't know what she had. Assuming it was a urinary tract infection, she'd barely identify the pills she needed. And as was to be expected, here there were no pills. There were only vials with dreamless sleep and bone-mending potions, and some others she couldn't guess the use of. Stepping back, she looked around, lost.

"If you need a book" Harry offered, "there's one right here"

She hadn't hoped for it, but he was right. Of course Madam Pomfrey had one of those, it was just surprising she'd keep it in plain sight. The witch hurried towards the big tome, opening it with a slight bang and a cough –it was, indeed, dusty- and trying to familiarize with the order of its content as she fought back the burning feeling and the worry that they were about to be caught.

Cheering potions.

Shape-shifting potions.

Love potions antidotes.

Infection healing potions!

She grasped a bunch of pages to get to the one she looked for just as Ron's discreet knock came, and everyone's heart stopped.

"Come into the cloak"

"It won't hide the book" she whispered as she tried to reach the page quickly.

She couldn't quit, not now. She was too close and too much in need.

Reaching the page, her finger traced the way from the name and characteristics of different potions to their possible adverse effects with a look at the consequences for the offspring. She still could hear Harry shift nervously and Ron's voice coming from the door as he obviously tried to distract someone. Her heart must be beating two hundred times per minute.

Then, as she closed the book with a bang, the nurse's office opened.

"Miss Granger" Madam Pomfrey said quietly, nothing in her face betraying the fact that she had just caught the best student of Hogwarts trying to steal medicine. "You might want to join me for tea."

So, for the second time in a pair of days, Hermione found herself walking into the office of someone she respected and fearing she was about to get "the speech" and about to lie to her face. Assuming she wasn't expelled at once. Funnily enough, the shock prevented her from feeling anything, even alarm. She was simply too sad that she wouldn't be able to help Harry anymore.

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The photograph was almost as wrinkled as the nurse herself, and upon its sight, Hermione found her attention shift thoroughly. Reaching for the small rectangle with a wary look to Madam Pomfrey, she felt curiosity flare to life and found herself unable to keep the indifference she had so built.

The picture was old. You could see it in the slow, lazy movement of the people displayed. Those were a young woman, young as herself, and a man whose traits had been purposefully hid from her particular sight (she had read about such a spell, and could recognize it in the characteristic fog in front of his face). There was a stiffness to them, a tiredness. Between them, the reason for it: a baby levitated in front of the couple. The only one clearly enjoying itself as it went up and down in front of its parents, she could almost see the giggles.

"Miss Granger" the nurse started as she put the kettle to the fire, her back to the student, "it seems as if I hadn't heard that alarm in centuries."

Hermione turned her eyes back to the nurse.

"The alarm?" She played dumb.

"You wouldn't expect it to sound only in the Head of House's rooms. It's more important for the nurse to be informed. In case there's a medical emergency."

So not related to the cabinet, then. As the older woman sat in the corner of her desk to wait for the water to boil, caring, sympathetic eyes looking straight to hers, Hermione already suspected this wasn't going to be easy. She shielded herself as best as she could, no easy task given the natural respect she felt for nurses in general, and for the older woman in particular.

"I am not so delusional as to think that no student engages in such activities outside the dorm" Had Hermione seen her wink? "Quite the opposite: those who do so assiduously tend to avoid those places where the castle makes sure I know."

And then, there was a cloud passing before the woman's eyes, and the cheerful mood was gone.

"I'm so very sorry, Miss Granger, but since you are under my general care, I have to ask. Are you on contraceptives?"

Hermione's lips tightened in a line. She might have paled, too. There was a silence so long that it was sure she was not going to answer. Had she respected the nurse any less, she would have stood and left.

"Sex is an absolutely normal, beautiful, delightful thing to experience" the nurse started, looking at her with the same caring eyes she had while she tended to Harry's injuries; it felt as if she was holding her hand, though she didn't. "It's just so much safer when one starts later in life. With a husband" the old woman nodded, staring into her eyes, before looking down and sighing. "So you have someone to care for you, you see? Because boyfriends, more often than not, walk away."

Hermione was watching for signs of manipulation, but she couldn't find them. There was only genuine care into the old woman's eyes. Obviously, too many girls had come to her in distress.

"One thing you must understand, Miss Granger, is that contraceptives tend to fail. Magical, muggle. Even the best of them. Whatever your position regarding them, don't delude yourself into thinking they are perfect. They are not. They are even less safe regarding venereal diseases. There is only one method one hundred percent safe for avoiding pregnancy, though it's not very popular these days."

With that, the nurse stood to fix them tea. It might have been relaxing to watch her pour the leaves.

"Milk?"

"No, thank you"

Madam Pomfrey placed the sugar in front of her and turned her spoon in her own cup thoughtfully.

"Becoming a woman means dealing with very hard subjects. It's not as much attached to the losing of virginity, as it is to the possibility of conception, since we are biologically the only ones capable of bearing a child."

The spoon sounded cheerfully around the porcelain, and the nurse lifted the cup to her lips.

"You aren't drinking"

Hermione eyed her own cup, delicate smoke steaming from it. She really didn't think there was veritaserum there, but she wasn't really in the mood. As she reached for the cup, the nurse went on:

"I just remembered a particular case..."

She sighed, a tired, old sound that sounded quite out of place coming from the lively woman.

"She was so very bright... Almost as much as you are. Transfigurations, mostly, though she did have a penchant for DADA. She helped me out, as an apprentice. She... I can't give you her name, obviously, nor should I give you more details. But I want you to know that she was real and warm and caring. For the purpose of the conversation let's give her a common name, let's say..."

"Mary" Hermione offered, seeing the nurse hesitate.

"Mary" Madam Pomfrey tried, not liking it much if her tight lips were a sign. "I shouldn't have favorites, but it was very hard with her. So when it was this girl's bed that rang, I was ready to ignore the event, if it meant... Mary... wouldn't be expelled. It seemed to be the spirit of everyone in the know."

Despite her best criteria, Hermione found herself staring at the older woman, hanging from her words as she unraveled the story that would well have been hers. Her curiosity, again, got the better of her. Shifting to face her nurse, she missed no word.

"So Mary got pregnant" she guessed.

"With a female" the nurse grimaced. "I didn't oppose Mary's mother when she pressed for abortion, despite my own experience with the subject and the girl's own reluctance."

"Because she was reluctant"

The nurse nodded slowly.

"As an apprentice, she had learned a bit about the embryo. For one, she knew that it had a unique DNA from the start, a DNA that was half hers, so that made it her offspring. Her daughter. That was enough for her to recognize it a right to keep the life she had already given to it."

The thought turned Hermione's stomach. She had heard about such cases, and the pain it brought. Though it always brought some kind of pain. Some loss.

"So she didn't think it was just a bunch of cells"

"Aren't we all?" The nurse asked with a sad smile. "Other thing you must understand" Madam Pomfrey went on, "is that when you are a nurse, or a professor, or a mother, sometimes you try for your child to succeed so hard... You'd do anything for her potential to bloom. You'd kill for it. You'd even force the child to do what you think is in her best interest."

"There were complications, I must assume..."

"She died."

The word hang from the ceiling, a figurative elephant in the room that seemed to raise its snout once in a while with a loud harrumph.

"Her family didn't take her to a butcher. It was no backstreet abortion. It was a modern hospital, with a proper doctor that also was a wizard, another of my most talented. She had the modern medicine and magic at her disposal. And still, she died"

A second of silence.

"Was it because she was reluctant?"

"No. Though that might have lead her to suicide anyway. No, she died during the procedure. Her breathing stopped." (1)

Her heartbreaking, discouraging, disconcerted plead wasn't easy to watch, so Hermione looked at the picture instead.

"I always find that girls don't know what they are risking when they get to that room" Madam Pomfrey added detachedly. "Bleeding. Perforations, even involving the bladder or rectum or both. Anesthetic complications. Remaining tissue, leading to infections of the uterus, the tubes, even the peritoneum. The list is too long. Hospitals do have more ressources to avoid complications and treat them, but I wonder how many of these complications fall under different rubrics when abortion is institutionalized, how many of them simply surface later, as an ectopic pregnancy or infertility, never to be linked to their original cause. I worry that abortion is increasingly perceived as "normal", if more and more girls go through it, and even do so repeatedly it... It can't be good for them."

Now the boy in the picture was reaching out to the baby girl. Hermione thought she had seen blue in his eyes.

"So this is not the girl, I suppose" Hermione concluded, "since this one didn't… you know… have an abortion"

"Actually, she did."

Madam Pomfrey shifted, crossing her arms.

"So how...?"

"I don't know if you're aware of the procedure with second to third trimester abortions" Madam Pomfrey sighed and continued much as she would have done in a classroom. "At that stage of pregnancy, the fetus is already viable, so they have to kill it inside or it'll come out obviously all baby..." her voice broke, the second hard story obviously meaning too much accumulative burden. Before Hermione's worried gaze, her nurse breathed and swallowed and continued, her tone changing and the pace slowing. "This other girl went through an induced, painful, traumatic delivery at the end of which she'd have no baby, if it worked. Imagine the doctor's gaze as they all heard the baby draw a hard breath…"

Then, as Hermione watched, the girl in the picture, whose face had been partially hidden in her partner's cloak -as she dozed off on his shoulder- woke up with a start.

"Anyway, I showed you the picture so you'd see other possible outcome: raising a child while being one…"

"Nurse" Hermione interrupted with the sort of detached slightly-cheerful interest one would expect from Luna, "does professor McGonagall know you're showing me this?"

From the corner of her eye, she saw Madam Pomfrey blink. Either she didn't expect the recognition, or she had expected more shock and horror from her. To her credit, she answered almost immediately.

"She told me to keep it and to use it for enlightenment. The girl is aware. We haven't discussed your particular case, which was exactly what we did with Mary: hope for the best."

It was to be expected. Hermione didn't think for a second that professor McGonagall of all people would have gotten pregnant as a teen, but again, that she would show her a picture of a random student in such a delicate position was even less possible, she imagined.

"How didn't I know?"

"Miss Granger" the nurse half joked, "are you so presumptuous as to believe that you know the details in the lives of all of your elders?"

Turning her eyes to the picture again, she muttered:

"I'm just sorry she had to go through it."

Madam Pomfrey seemed to be taken aback by the heartfelt comment. When she finally answered, her voice was cautious but not unfriendly.

"It was a lot of things, bad and good. Easy, was not one of them."

Silence followed. Hermione wasn't surprised. She couldn't imagine how hard it was for the stoic nurse to strip a fellow professor in front of a student like that. Never before had she sounded so old and weak.

"Why didn't she give her away?"

"Apparently, and though she had no feelings for the baby, upon laying eyes on her, Minerva recognized her as part of her clan. Trust a scotch to think like that. So she raised her."

Hermione's left fingers touched the picture slightly, as she found herself reflected and tried to get used to the image she would present.

"Then how did she finish her education? How did she become a professor here?"

There was real interest in her question. Hermione saw Madam Pomfrey stiffen and look at her middle with apprehension. However, she could hardly disguise her eagerness to know the answer that would equally apply to her in a matter of months, if Harry was lucky enough.

"It was hard, mainly because her mother wouldn't stay with the child. Having gotten pregnant in the holidays was helpful with the school board, because she hadn't strictly broken any rules, since she hadn't been here to begin with. The main worry was who would take care of the child as she went to class. Helpfully, the former nurse didn't mind having Ann in the nursery. If she had more pressing matters she could take the baby to class, unless it was Potions, then she'd always stay in the Common Room with someone. Ann became a bit like the pet of the class."

It felt like a weight being lifted from her chest. Hermione breathed freely for the first time since all of this had started, and she hadn't even noticed the lack of oxygen until now. She could stay. She had a future here. Even the breaking of rules seemed trivial when she had thought such thing was utterly impossible.

"Am I to be worried, Miss Granger?"

The shine of joy had obviously shown. Hermione tried to control it, but sometimes she was even worse than Harry at controlling her emotions. Luckily, the truth was too far from Madam Pomfrey's imagination to make her guess. The girl simply shook her head and with an untrusting stare, the nurse got back to topic, stressing the danger.

"As nurse of a teen school, I have seen a lot of cases like these. Whether the little one is born or terminated, there is always some consequence for its mother. The time lost from school might even be the lesser problem. Yet, an entire month can go by as the girl takes a series of tests and the abortion itself, then more tests and maybe another abortion if the first one failed. I don't have to tell you how hard it is to study with a baby. I don't dare raise the subject of adoption, though I have been lead to believe it's the easiest, less painful way for everyone involved."

Given the delicate subject, Hermione hesitated in asking, but Madam Pomfrey seemed to be all right with the daughter's name, so curiosity eventually got the better of her and she stepped into the minefield:

"Is Ann still around?"

"She's in America now" Madam Pomfrey answered. "A quite bright girl, I reckon. You must have heard of her. Ann Gilbert?"

Hermione felt her eyes widen as her mind displayed a series of titles of what were the best, most innovative papers she had read. Ever.

Given McGonagall's age, the kid must have married decades ago, hence the last name.

As Hermione fought for words, the nurse answered her unspoken wish.

"Sure, Miss Granger. You may meet her when she comes to visit. Please don't have her up all night with your questions."

And after a few heartbeats, she added:

"Do you get why was I trying to warn you?"

"I always did, madam."

Hermione couldn't explain, so she was about to stand when the nurse made her sit back with a quiet sign of her hand.

"We haven't discussed why were you here. How can I help?"

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The burning was finally disappearing as Hermione walked away, half expecting the nurse to follow, to send her to the headmaster, etc. If they had enough proof to speak that freely to her, they had enough proof to expel her. She could hear Harry's steps besides her own, and judging by the nurse's look, she might be letting him walk as well. As she walked past Ron, he started walking with them as well.

"What happened" he whispered a bit loudly. "Did she give you detention or something?"

Harry shushed him as they saw McGonagall approach them. Hermione lifted her eyes to the woman she respected, who was in turn looking at her with the kind of worry she would expect from her own mother, and a touch of old, bleeding pain. Suddenly the girl walked to the woman and threw her arms around her, felt her stiffen and pat her rigidly on the shoulder. She wanted to tell her that she knew, that she was sorry, that she wanted to meet Ann; but she didn't dare, in front of the boys, who were already too well informed. She also wanted to assure her she had good reasons for risking a teenage pregnancy, but a good part of it wasn't her secret.

She didn't know exactly what she felt. The alarm she had felt for herself was gone, as the nurse –learning from examination what the student wouldn't confess- confirmed she had only a bladder infection and gave her a nasty tasting blue potion that worked at once. That someone had had a baby here at school was good news, it was precedent. Yet, all in all, she couldn't feel the relief she had anticipated while having learned what she had. She couldn't understand how the nurse could stay cheerful and bright as she carried so many stories with her. She felt numb.

"I am very, very grateful" she told her boys back in the common room.

"Are you all right?" If even Ron had noticed, she looked worse than she had expected.

"I am" she assured him. "Thanks to you. I'm sorry, Ron. I'm a rather private person, but you didn't deserve the screaming… this time"

"It's forgotten"

Harry was putting away his cloak, and when he came back to the common room, they were alone and she was on the sofa, in fetal position. He kneeled just in front of her face, eyes searching hers for clues –if he was welcome, if he could help-. Hesitantly he took a place behind her back and curled around her. Since she grabbed his arm and used it as a pillow, he relaxed against her.

"Are you all right?"

She nodded.

"Can I help?"

"You already did. You can't know what I was suffering." Though she suspected he was to know, when he was older and with a hyperplasic prostate; but he didn't need to know that now.

They were like that for a long, long time, none of them moving, as they heard the crack of wood on fire. There was a stillness, a silence, that helped a bit. His arms slithered around her and she felt so safe and warm.

"Hermione, when you were sick…" she blinked, hearing him gasp and find words. "It's hard to see you hurt. Petrified or otherwise" his sigh on her ear tickled a bit. Then he raised on an elbow, as his other hand gently coerced her cheek so she was facing him. His eyes looked bright green to the golden light "That thing they promise… 'In sickness and in health'… I'd really want that… with you"

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(1) Two of my professors had anesthetic complications to D&C: respiratory arrest. It's supposed to happen once in hundreds of cases. What are the odds, right?

Author's note: I hope you're still with me and not offended. I might change the chapter according to reviews, so please feel free to speak up, as long as you are respectful and helpful.


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